Operas & Plays

by Gertrude Stein

Although Gertrude Stein, as much as James Joyce, is often considered the most famous and influential of modern experimental writers of prose and poetry, few realize the breadth and depth of her contribution to theater and opera, which hardly stops with the justly famous collaboration with Virgil Thomson, "Four Saints in Three Acts." She considered Operas and Plays to be her definitive statement, as of 1932, for the stage. Born in 1874 in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, raised in Oakland, California, she lived in France from 1903 till her death in 1946.

Genres: Drama, Theatre, Fiction, Plays

400 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1987

About the author

Gertrude Stein was an American writer who spent most of her life in France, and who became a catalyst in the development of modern art and literature. Her life was marked by two primary relationships, the first with her brother Leo Stein, from 1874-1914, and the second with Alice B. Toklas, from 1907 until Stein's death in 1946. Stein shared her salon at 27 rue de Fleurus, Paris, first with Leo and then with Alice. Throughout her lifetime, Stein cultivated significant tertiary relationships with well-known members of the avant garde artistic and literary world of her time.

Reviews

[Drew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Have I read this tome before? Definitely parts. Yet outside of the ones I've seen ("Parlor" and "Four Saints in Three Acts"), few of them have truly stuck with me. Which is not to say Stein does not intrigue but when there's neither a clear plot nor conventional characters, you're left with conceptual games, word play, thought flow, and structural invention. "Capital Capitals" and "Civilization" were most to my liking -- is it the rhythm? Might be. But if there's a difference between how she writes operas and plays here, it's lost on me. So curious.