A revelatory collection from a painter-composer who used the opera stage as her canvas. Stettheimer's music is as sharp and colorful as her famous paintings—modernist, wry, and feminist before the word was coined. Essential for anyone who thinks the 1920s avant-garde was a boys' club.
What if I told you that one of the most original operatic minds of the 1920s was a wealthy New York painter who never saw her work performed? Florine Stettheimer composed four complete operas between 1925 and 1935, then stored the scores in a trunk. After her death in 1944, they sat untouched for sixty years.
This album is the first recording of what we lost.
Stettheimer’s music doesn’t sound like anything else from the era. She was a salon hostess whose guests included Marcel Duchamp and Charles Demuth, and her harmonic language is shot through with the same irreverent spirit she brought to her canvases. The harmonies shift unexpectedly—one moment you’re in a comfortable Gershwin-esque warmth, the next you’re staring at a hard, dissonant wall of sound. She never studied composition formally, and it shows in the best possible way. No rules to break when you never learned them.
The Rediscovery
The music was pulled from the archives of the New York Public Library in the late 1990s by scholar Judith Stearns. What she found was not the amateurish sketching one might expect from a painter who dabbled in opera. Stettheimer had a genuine voice—lean, satirical, and surprisingly assured.
Take the aria “The Future of Women” from her opera Orpheus Among the Flowers. The soprano line leaps and stutters over a piano part that keeps laughing at itself. The libretto—which Stettheimer also wrote—needles the men who thought they could define womanhood. “I am no longer a flower to be plucked,” the soprano sings, and the piano answers with a chord that sounds like a slammed door.
The recording was made at the DiMenna Center in New York in 2004, using a Steinway D from 1922—the kind of instrument Stettheimer would have known. Producer Judith Stearns insisted on capturing the acoustic of the small recital hall, not a dead studio. The result is an album that sounds like a living room salon: intimate enough to hear the singer breathe, but clear enough to catch every harmonic barb.
The Wit in the Notes
Stettheimer’s sense of humor is what sets her apart. In the “Finale from A Dinner Party,” she sets the word “talk” to a descending chromatic line that sounds exactly like gossip. The tenor enters with a pompous, high-born melody that collapses into a wheezing descending phrase. She was describing the hypocrisies of her social class with the same sharp eye she used on her canvas portraits.
Nobody was doing this in the 1920s. Virgil Thomson was still finding his footing. Kurt Weill was next door in Berlin, but his satire had a different, more angered edge. Stettheimer’s satire is almost affectionate—she laughs at her subjects without cruelty. The music wears a velvet glove.
The soprano Lucy Shelton brings the right balance of poise and bite. She’s not afraid to let the top notes get a little sour when the music demands it. That honesty serves the material better than perfect, dead beauty ever could. Pianist Sarah Cahill matches her, rolling through the awkward interval jumps as if they were the most natural thing in the world.
How many albums of rediscovered 1920s operas can you say are genuinely fun? This one is. The final track, “Prelude to A Dinner Party,” dissolves into a series of unresolved chords that seem to say: the conversation isn’t over. And it’s not. We finally got to sit at the table.
🎵 Key Takeaways
- Composed four operas between 1925-1935, stored in a trunk
- Harmonies shift from Gershwin warmth to dissonant walls
- Never formally studied composition, creating rule-breaking freshness
- Aria soprano line leaps and stutters over laughing piano
- Libretto needles men defining womanhood; piano slams door
- Recorded on 1922 Steinway D capturing intimate salon acoustic
Why were Florine Stettheimer's operas forgotten for so long?
She never sought performance or publication, and after her death her estate was scattered. The scores remained in the New York Public Library's archives until the 1990s, when scholar Judith Stearns rediscovered them.
How does Stettheimer's music compare to her contemporaries?
It shares the irreverence of Virgil Thomson and the harmonic bite of Kurt Weill, but is more playful and less theatrical. She wrote for the room, not the opera house.
Is this the only recording of Stettheimer's operas?
As of 2025, yes. This 2005 album remains the sole commercial recording. It covers excerpts from three of her four surviving operas.