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PRIOR INSTALLMENTS
to access an installment, click on a number
[the largest number is the most recent installment]
 Put good shoes on my feet and I’m not only moving but I’m traveling to unexpected places. I’m in the middle of plotting an opera and people keep asking how did you get this project started much less get this far? Here begins a travelogue pastiche of the work-in-progress opera: Gertrude Stein Invents A Jump Early On. This installment shows the bootstraps—how did this poet, composer, and artistic director get involved in this project?
 Whereas the first installment of my opera story moved around the map of the United States, Europe and North Africa, this part of the story of Gertrude Stein Invents A Jump Early On is more a head trip. People keep asking me, “how does one get from poetry to opera libretto?” So without getting into the blood and guts of my quirky creative birthing process, I will provide the basic ingredients that spur or spurred me on within the philosophic framework Gertrude Stein set out for her writing, including her considerable theater work which numbers 80 plays and libretti.
 Webster’s New World and American Heritage dictionaries define the word collaboration as either two or more artists or scientists working together on a joint project or a person or people cooperating with the enemy. To fully appreciate The Steiny Road to Operadom, one must keep in view both of these definitions. As I hinted in my last essay, collaboration can be a difficult kind of relationship. To offer perspective about my collaboration with composer William Barfield and artistic director Nancy Rhodes, I will also talk about the collaboration between Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson.
 In the last installment of The Steiny Road, my parting words included the admonition, don’t go into the woods alone. In this essay, my travel advisory is about building community and finding out whose woods these are that you wish to penetrate.
 In the first Steiny Road column, I discussed how the work-in-progress opera Gertrude Stein Invents A Jump Early On got started, but merely ticking off the sequence of events leading to the commissioning of the project does not tell the whole story. What I will attempt to ignite in this telling is the elusive spark that erupts when people believe in you enough to stop what they are doing and turn their attention to your project. So this column continues the thread about the importance of community that I presented in the last essay while weaving in the performance aspect.
 The Mother of Us All, the second and final opera collaboration between Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson, looms large in the creation of the work-in-progress opera Gertrude Stein Invents A Jump Early On. In this essay, I invoke a wider lens and name the spirit guides (ghosts) who also form part of the community that supports the development of my opera collaboration with composer William Banfield and Encompass New Opera Theatre artistic director Nancy Rhodes.
 Critics. In this Steiny Road essay, I will provide background on the subject of critics and artistic criticism by outlining the significance of critics in relation to Gertrude Stein and her writing as well as the significance of critics to the work-in-progress opera Gertrude Stein Invents A Jump Early On. Additionally, I will define what I expect an opera review to cover.
 Critical to the process of developing an opera, such as Gertrude Stein Invents A Jump Early On, is the workshop. I begin with the word critical because it suggests critic, a player who is integral to the longevity of any artistic work. Even if the critic is not favorably disposed, a published review by a critic demonstrates that the work merits consideration by the public. Since one cannot control what critics will think, opera collaborators need to test their work and hear feedback before going public.
 How does a poet on the Steiny Road to Operadom educate herself
to develop a successful opera?
 Opera as grand essay. What is it? How does it differ from Grand Opera and other forms of opera? Did Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson create a grand essay with their opera collaborations? Does grand essay apply to Gertrude Stein Invents A Jump Early On?
 Part of the process of convincing a publisher or theatrical producer to bring a creative work into public view is knowing what else has been done with your subject and what the pitfalls are. In the case of Gertrude Stein Invents A Jump Early On, an opera about the life and work of an American literary radical who remains more a notorious figure from our cultural history than a revered author, this question is an ongoing research project as new works appear in public limelight. Pitfalls involve such things as copyright issues and audience receptivity.
 Commissions are a big cause of concern on the Steiny Road to Operadom and for anyone with enough chutzpah or blissful innocence to undertake an opera project.
 What is American opera? What characteristics distinguish it from its European roots? How important is it to create American opera? What's the difference between opera and music theater? These are questions the Steiny Road poet has been pondering and has posed to several contemporary American composers, including Mark Adamo, Deborah Drattell, Jonathan Bailey Holland, Elena Ruehr, and Adam Silverman.
 Leaving no Stein, uh stone, unturned, the Steiny Road Poet traveled to San Francisco to talk with Renate Stendhal, author of Gertrude Stein In Words And Pictures, about developing an audience within the women’s community for the work-in-progress opera Gertrude Stein Invents A Jump Early On. Making more connections related to Stein, the Poet also met or spoke with Stein aficionados Hans Gallas and Paul Padgette and representatives of the newly developing International Museum of Women.
 Recently, the Steiny Road Poet has encountered two organizations that are engaged in building arts centers with theaters. Because the Poet and her collaborators expect not only to premiere Gertrude Stein Invents A Jump Early On in New York City but also to take the work on the road, new theater spaces have that build-it-and-they-will-come appeal.
 The Steiny Road Poet tends to find exotic and puzzling connections and correspondences. Take for example her recent discovery that Ann Hoyt, the first soprano in New York City to debut as Gertrude of Gertrude Stein Invents A Jump Early On, nurtures an intimate relationship with Venus, the goddess of love. This discovery excites the Poet because she adored the performance Ms. Hoyt gave as Gertrude and at the same time knew Ms. Hoyt would never premiere as Gertrude Stein in the opera collaboration between the Poet, William Banfield, and Encompass New Opera Theatre artistic director Nancy Rhodes.
 In creating the libretto for Gertrude Stein Invents A Jump Early On, the Steiny Road Poet has had to come to terms with this fact: her expertise is poetry and not drama. In this installment of The Steiny Road to Operadom, the Poet will discuss some of the creative partners who contribute to the development of an opera libretto. Specifically she will define the dramaturg, director, and artistic director. However, as the discussion of making Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson’s opera Four Saints in Three Acts stage ready will reveal, the creative partners often defy pigeonholing.
 Hubris, vanity, rejection. In an artist’s life, these stations along the road called ambition loom larger than the witches Macbeth met on a Scottish heath. Gertrude Stein excised these words from her vocabulary. She openly named herself genius. She declared herself equal with her male peers that included Ezra Pound and James Joyce.
 Putting things in perspective is a constant in a writer’s life – what is happening now versus yesterday and tomorrow’s scheduled events and accidents. Gertrude Stein placed her emphasis on the present moment. Through her insistent repetition and use of the ‘ing’ present participle form of the verb, she delivered and continues to deliver her reader into a visceral connection with this moment, this breath. Breath and the creative act are what the Steiny Road Poet will address in this opera episode.
 The Steiny Road Poet has been thinking about how to get follow on productions underway. That is, when she is not assisting with the wording of the publicity for the world premiere of Gertrude Stein Invents A Jump Early On, participating in the search for appropriate and affordable images of Gertrude Stein, or lining up a bookstore to sell the books of noted academics who will speak at the Gertrude Stein Salon that will precede the Stein opera premiere.
 The world premiere of Gertrude Stein Invents A Jump Early On by poet Karren LaLonde Alenier and composer William Banfield goes on stage in New York City, thanks to Nancy Rhodes and Encompass New Opera Theatre, June 15-18, 2005. As educational outreach prior to the premiere, Director Rhodes and the Steiny Road Poet have arranged an arts salon free and open to the public at the CUNY Siegel Performing Arts Center June 10 that will feature sample arias sung by Encompass performers and a panel of authors who have written about Stein.
 Jitters. As the clock ticks its way closer to the opening night of Encompass New Opera Theatre’s world premiere of Gertrude Stein Invents A Jump Early On by poet Karren LaLonde Alenier and composer William Banfield, the Steiny Road Poet has wedged several bones into the dike of emotions that threatens to flood her usual calm.
 Where does a poet go after a New York City world premiere of her opera that not only is delivered by outstanding performers to an intelligent and receptive set of audiences filling the greater majority of house seats, but also is reviewed favorably by the one critic at the Nation's most influential newspaper, the one critic who understands the subject matter — the world of Gertrude Stein?
 In this episode of the Steiny Road to Operadom, the Poet will explore the electricity generated by the much anticipated world premiere of John Adam's third opera by providing a report from the community at large and also a short vignette of the 50th anniversary celebration of the first reading of Allen Ginsberg's provocative epic poem Howl, which Gary Snider described as a "poetical bombshell" in a prophetic letter urging Philip Whalen to participate in the Six Gallery reading.
 If the opera Gertrude Stein Invents A Jump Early On could be started over from the beginning, what would the Steiny Road Poet have done differently? Hearing this question, the Poet is reminded of a scene that occurred in World War II between avant-garde writer Jean Cocteau and cabaret singer Edith Piaf. Here is the Poet’s account of that incident
 For the Steiny Road Poet, every voyage away from home seems to develop its own theme. A recent trip to New York City began with an accommodating man carrying her luggage up subway stairs. Setting the bag down, he asked if the Poet knew about Buddhism. The Poet said that she was going to a play reading about the six realms of Samsara.
 The Steiny Road Poet offers this hit-and-run tale about who wrote The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.
 While the world premiere of an opera represents the culmination of hard work and leaps of faith, new productions are usually harder to arrange and seem to require an innate sense of timing and the ability to read minds.
 The BIG PICTURE—in the production of an opera, who among the collaborators has it and what influence is exerted? On the advent of the first anniversary of the world premiere of Gertrude Stein Invents A Jump Early On, the Steiny Road Poet spoke with her collaborating music director John Yaffé and realized how important a wide lens vision is to the success of a new opera
 When Eve Gigliotti prepared for her role as Gertrude in Gertrude Stein Invents A Jump Early On by composer William Banfield and Steiny Road Poet Karren LaLonde Alenier, she created a Gertrude shrine. She did this by hanging photos of Stein around her room.
 The world of the classical music critic is small and intimate. Tim Page who is senior classical music critic for The Washington Post said in a recent interview that there are only twenty to twenty-five people making the bulk of their incomes in this way. He says he can name most of them.
 The Price of New Opera
In this episode of the Steiny Road, the Poet will peer gingerly into the ledger books to give a glimpse of what money is required today to develop and produce a new opera by a small opera company.
 Stein versus Disney
On September 3, 2006, the Steiny Road Poet waded into a sea of children, especially adorable little girls dressed in yellow gold princess gowns, to see Beauty and the Beast written by composer Alan Menken, lyricists Howard Ashman and Tim Rice, and book writer Linda Woolverton.
 On Hearing The Musicians
Although the Steiny Road Poet has always entertained the far-flung notion that she would enjoy being a conductor of a large orchestra, the truth is she knew little about the experience until she interviewed John Yaffé in June 2006 for Scene4 Magazine.
 The First Emperor Seen From A Steinian Lens
If Gertrude Stein were alive today to ponder the creative issues behind The First Emperor, a new opera with music by Tan Dun and libretto co-written by Ha Jin and Tan Dun, she might say that the storywriters had identity problems that got bollixed up with human nature and landscape. Perhaps there was also a little taint of money involved.
 Happy Anniversary! Four Years On the Steiny Road
March 2007 marks the fourth anniversary of this column originally titled Bumper Cars: The Steiny Road to Operadom. This year the Steiny Road Poet has something to show for those years and to celebrate—a forthcoming book based mostly on the column and feature essays published in Scene4 Magazine. This hard copy book is called The Steiny Road to Operadom: The Making of American Operas.
 The Steiny Road’s ‘Making of American Operas’
Just as the first public presentation of the words to Gertrude Stein Invents a Jump Early On (before it became an opera libretto) occurred on a day challenged by weather—DC: February 3, 1996, two feet of snow on the ground, the first public announcement of the book The Steiny Road to Operadom: The Making of American Operas happened during a miserable storm of rain, sleet, hail and snow—NYC: March 16, 2007.
 Meeting Wanda Corn
On March 25, 2007, the Steiny Road Poet had the deep pleasure of meeting and hearing Dr. Wanda Corn, a highly respected and well-published scholar of American art, speak on this topic: The Return of the Native: Gertrude Stein's 1934 American Tour.
 100 Years, 100 Roses with Hans Gallas
When Gertrude Stein met Alice B. Toklas defines the essence of 100 Years, 100 Roses, a multi-city celebration of the American literary couple who lived in Paris during their lifelong partnership. For Hans Gallas, the organizer of this ambitious international commemoration anchored in San Francisco and commencing June 2007, this is an opportunity to share his Stein-Toklas collection and to find and develop new audiences for Gertrude Stein.
 Let's Play A Play
If the Steiny Road Poet were a child living in Brooklyn, she would throw a tantrum until her parents signed her up for Let Us Play A Play. This theater workshop—presented by Jessica Brater, the artistic director of Polybe + Seats; Katya Schapiro, Polybe company member; and Molly Parker-Myers, a Polybe + Seats featured actor—offers six afternoons in July with a public performance on July 20.
 Let’s Play A Play - redux
It’s not often that a columnist presents a story about an upcoming event and then writes a follow up. The last Steiny Road column (q.v.) featured Let Us Play A Play, a theater workshop for children focused on a play by Gertrude Stein and developed by Jessica Brater, the artistic director of Polybe + Seats; Katya Schapiro, a Polybe company member; and Molly Parker-Myers, a Polybe + Seats featured actor.
 Stories: On The Nature Of Poetry
While the Steiny Road Poet has gone to New Hampshire to work on a second opera libretto, she offers her dedicated readers this poem in the voice of fiction writer and composer Paul Bowles. Bowles had a good ear for poetry and helped the Steiny Road Poet with her poems about Gertrude Stein. The SRP recommends reading Next to Nothing the poems of Paul Bowles. She thinks his poems are quite powerful.
 Merrily We Roll Along
Although Gertrude Stein said to the sculptor Jacques Lipschitz as quoted in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas that she never mind posing, she warned him that she did not like sculpture. She also added that Lipschitz was a wonderful gossip and that she, loving beginnings, middles and ends of stories, found Lipschitz engaging because he supplied missing parts of several stories. Could it be that Stein didn’t like things set in stone, including her own bust that Lipschitz rendered in a true-to-life style?
 Two Lives
Ouch! That fire Jane Malcolm’s new book Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice has lit under the Steiny Road Poet is sooo hot.
 An Idiot Divine
Gertrude Stein wrote in Everybody’s Autobiography, “It is funny the two things most men are proudest of is the thing that any man can do and doing does in the same way, that is being drunk and being the father of their son.” Just before World War II she was quoted, "There is too much fathering going on just now and there is no doubt about it fathers are depressing.
 Happy Birthday, Gertrude Stein
Grab a party hat and a squonky horn, Dear Reader, you are entering the virtual birthday party for Gertrude Stein. February 3, 2008, marks the 134th anniversary of Stein’s birth. At this time of the year, the Steiny Road Poet has often hosted an actual salon in Stein’s honor by inviting poet friends to bring and recite one of their own poems to fete the great modernist writer.
 In Circles
Like a Sufi, the Steiny Road Poet is spinning with ecstatic energy. On February 12, 2008, she attended the opening night of Kaliyuga Arts and John Sowle’s new production of In Circles, Al Carmines’ musical setting of Gertrude Stein’s A Circular Play.
 Opera and Poltics
The Steiny Road Poet has been telling her friends and colleagues lately that The Mother of Us All, Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson’s opera that premiered in 1947, seems to inform the race for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States.
 Listening to Gertrude
Sound. To better understand and appreciate the work of Gertrude Stein, one must hear aloud the poetic texts of this most under-read Modernist writer.
 The Coupling of Couples
Well-known addresses often evoke inhabitants of fame or notoriety. Currently citizens of the United States are focused on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC, and who will supercede George W. and Laura Bush. In the world of the Steiny Road Poet, the address of importance is 27 rue de Fleurus, Paris, which also happens to be the title of Ted Sod and Lisa Koch’s musical.
 A Libretto Is Written
In the lecture “Pictures” written for her 1934 American lecture tour, Gertrude Stein said “Now most of us live in ourselves that is to say in one thing and we have to have a relief from the intensity of that thing and so we like to look at something.” The Steiny Road Poet knows the intensity of living inside her own imagination and with her own concerns and subject matter.
 Death Plots
What’s the cost of a plot? The Steiny Road Poet poses this question ambiguously for these reasons: 1) because of paper she will present at the conference Lifting Belly High: A Conference on Women’s Poetry Since 1900, she has been studying Gertrude Stein more deeply than usual, in which case, the bucking of habitual storyline—plot—came into focus with Stein’s lecture on plays, 2) the Steiny Road Poet made a pilgrimage to the family cemetery on the third anniversary of the death of her dear friend Hilary Tham, and 3) the Poet attended a preview of What’s A Little Death, a musicalized play by playwright-lyricist Juanita Rockwell, composer Chas Marsh, and director Leslie Felbain.
 Political Slogans
Political slogans, this is what the Steiny Road Poet has been thinking about as she finished writing and delivering a talk based on her paper about whether Gertrude Stein was a medievalist, futurist or both for Lifting Belly High: A Conference on Women’s Poetry Since 1900 held at Duquesne University. The Poet’s paper is based on Stein’s so called children’s story To Do: A Book of Alphabets and Birthdays. The Poet used this story in a Scene4 Magazine tribute on the occasion of Stein’s 134th birthday earlier this year.
 The Presence of Names
Throughout her massive collection of writings, Gertrude Stein had a lot to say about people’s names. In her lecture on poetry and grammar, she said, “People if you like to believe it can be made by their names. Call any body Paul and they get to be a Paul call anybody Alice and they get to be an Alice perhaps yes perhaps no, there is something in that…” In To Do: A Book of Alphabets and Birthdays, she used the structure of a child’s primer to catalogue names and relate anecdotes about the characters she had named.
 The Ever Best of Virgil Thomson
Promoting American opera is the torch that the Steiny Road Poet carries. Concrete evidence of her support for American opera is embodied in her book The Steiny Road to Operadom: The Making of American Operas which is what led her to pay an impromptu visit in early February 2008 with Dr. Frank Hentschker, Director of Programs at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of The Graduate Center, The City University of New York (CUNY). Out of that short meeting came an unexpected big plan: the 75th anniversary celebration of the 1934 Broadway premiere of Gertrude Stein's and Virgil Thomson's seminal opera Four Saints in Three Acts.
 Conversation with a Genius
The Steiny Road Poet thinks she has met a genius—director Jay Scheib, who in six months read and digested Gertrude Stein's 900-plus-page novel The Making of Americans. After the Poet gasped, she could hear the director shrugging as they each held a telephone receiver to their respective ears on January 8, 2009.
 Enjoying Perfect Harmony
Avoid the riots, reserve now. This is how Encompass New Opera Theatre advertised their March 15, 2009, Manhattan School of Music follow-on performance of Four Saints in Three Acts, the 1934 opera by Virgil Thomson based on an experimental libretto by Gertrude Stein. The Steiny Road Poet says “follow-on” because Encompass, under the direction of Nancy Rhodes, produced at the CUNY Graduate Center’s Elebash Recital Hall February 20, 2009, for the occasion of the opera’s 75th anniversary of its recording-setting 60-performance Broadway premier, Four Saints to an over-capacity audience, some of whom got locked out of the show.
 Peter Grimes at the WNO
Peter Grimes, the 1945 darkly themed opera by Benjamin Britten with a libretto by Montagu Slater, had its Washington National Opera company premiere March 21 to April 4, 2009, at the Kennedy Center. The Steiny Road Poet saw it opening night and again on March 26. She would have enjoyed seeing it a third time. Could it be that after a full year of giving all her attention and devotion to the enthusiastic study and appreciation of Gertrude Stein’s and Virgil Thomson’s cutting-edge opera Four Saints in Three Acts that the Steiny Road Poet has fallen in love with another twentieth century opera that seems by contrast to oppose what the Poet loves about Four Saints?
 Oh Virgil
Living as an artist means work, play, and dailyness (i.e. eating, sleeping, dressing, etc.) are a seamless flow of activities. Among the guiding lights the Steiny Road Poet walks around with are not only Gertrude Stein, but also Virgil Thomson. Thomson was a composer and critic who excelled at writing music and words.
 The Geographical History
Upon arriving May 15, 20009, at the KGB Bar in Manhattan's Village, the Steiny Road Poet was given an option to put on her critic's hat for Lindsey Hope Pearlman's and Randi Rivera's adaptation of Gertrude Stein's The Geographical History of America, a show sponsored by "Horse Trade" and "Human Group". The Poet had not planned to pull out her pen, but rather had come to see how Stein would fare in the KGB and something called The Red Room.
 The Steiny Road to Fame
Karen Leick’s Gertrude Stein and the Making of an American Celebrity, a book published in May 2009, immediately grabbed the Steiny Road Poet’s full attention as soon as she opened it’s blue cover. While this is a Po-Mo review, several things excited the Poet about this book. It dispels the popular notion that Gertrude Stein became a household name after the publication of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. It puts into context during the early part of the Twentieth Century the critical role that newspapers played in making prominent authors of Modernism (for example: Stein, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Virginia Woolf) known to the general American population. What, you say, Dear Reader, ordinary Americans regularly read about Gertrude Stein and her modernist confrères at breakfast? And except for a couple of words such as contextualize and binary, Leick has written this book in the English most anyone can understand and certainly Stein herself would have advocated.
 A Big Read
Listen up. The Steiny Road Poet took the plunge and read every page of Gertrude Stein’s magnum opus The Making of Americans: Being a History of a Family’s Progress. Big deal? Yes. Was it hard to do? Yes and no.
 A Miscreant for Today
Who wrote the most misogynistic book every published and how is it possible that Gertrude Stein was influenced by such a miscreant? The Steiny Road Poet having just read Stein’s magnum opus The Making of Americans wanted to know more about Stein’s interest in Otto Weininger. What she also discovered in reading about Weininger (1880-1903) is that gender and race politics of his time have a lot in common with current day events and attitudes by a loud but small segment of the American population.
 Gertrude As Buddha
The Steiny Road Poet intends to open some doors here without necessarily closing them when she is finished. In preparation for a trip to China, she read The Man Who Loved China by Simon Winchester. This book published in 2008 is a biography of British scientist Joseph Needham, who became passionately involved with Chinese affairs during World War II.
 From China With Love
Chinese people love singing. Perhaps it is because speaking their language with its rising and falling tones (here The Steiny Road Poet is specifically thinking of Mandarin) is like singing. While Gertrude Stein never traveled to China or learned Mandarin, the unparalleled Modernist whose ear was always tuned to language noted miles and miles of Chinese children singing in her so-called children’s book To Do: A Book of Alphabets and Birthdays. On a recent trip to China, the Steiny Road Poet, who suddenly took up college-level studies of Mandarin, had the occasion to experience ordinary people singing as well as theater professionals.
 Lingua Chinois
The Modernists writers like Ezra Pound loved literature and art from the Far East. Because Gertrude Stein employed a Chinese cook, admired Chinese poetry in translation, mentioned Chinese people and landscape in some of her work, the Steiny Road Poet wonders if this Modernist ever gave a passing glance at learning Chinese, a non-alphabetic language?
 Revolution of Forms
When the Steiny Road Poet began her collaboration with William Banfield on Gertrude Stein Invents a Jump Early On, Bill suggested that the Poet listen to Anthony Davis’s X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X. The score has a rich palette of swing, scat, modal jazz, and rap while adhering to traditional operatic formats. On March 24, 2010 at the Duke Ellington School for the Arts in Washington, DC, the Poet had an opportunity to talk with Davis and his first comment to her was a compliment regarding Bill Banfield’s work.
 John Adams: Perspectives
For those of you who love contemporary opera, the Steiny Road Poet challenges you to imagine the music of your favorite opera coming out of the pit onto the stage alone without voices and movement of the singers. On May 20, 2010, the Poet had the pleasure of being steeped in a selection of the music of Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes and John Adams’ Doctor Atomic. John Adams conducted the concert as well as selected the music to be played.
 The Turn of the Screw
In this episode of The Steiny Road to Operadom, the Steiny Road Poet has gone off the beaten path to Castleton, Virginia, home to maestro Lauren Maazel who invites young artists to his estate where he has full working theaters. On July 3, 2010, as part of the second annual Castleton Festival, the Poet experienced Benjamin Britten’s edge-of-the-seat chamber opera The Turn of the Screw with libretto by Myfanwy Piper.
PRIOR INSTALLMENTS
to access an installment, click on a number
[the largest number is the most recent installment]
© 2003-2010 Karren LaLonde Alenier
© 2003-2010 Publication Scene4 Magazine
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