Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein's second opera is a sly, deceptively simple work about Susan B. Anthony that uses American folk and hymn tunes as a Trojan horse for modernist wit. It sounds like nothing else from its era, and that is precisely the point.
The Mother of Us All is not an easy listen, nor was it meant to be.
Virgil Thomson set Gertrude Stein’s libretto to music that sounds like a Sunday hymnbook rewritten by a Parisian provocateur. The result is an opera about Susan B. Anthony that feels at once old-fashioned and utterly alien. Thomson called it “a pageant of nearly forgotten American history,” but that undersells the wildness under the surface.
The score moves in blocks of plain diatonic harmony, like shapes cut from felt. Here a revival hymn, there a parlor song, then a military march. Thomson refused to develop themes in the European manner. He simply placed one tune beside another and let Stein’s looping, repetitive text do the work. It shouldn’t work. It works brilliantly.
Stein wrote the libretto in the months before her death in 1946. She finished it on July 19, 1946 — her seventy-second birthday — and died eight days later. Thomson had already started composing music for the first act. He completed the full score by March 1947.
The premiere took place at Brander Matthews Hall at Columbia University on May 7, 1947. The production was mounted by the Columbia Theatre Associates, directed by John Taras, with sets by the painter Paul Cadmus and his brother-in-law Jared French. The lead was sung by soprano Dorothy Dow, who brought a steeliness to Susan B. that the role demands.
What makes the opera endure is its refusal to sentimentalize Anthony’s battle. Stein’s text is full of repetitions and non sequiturs that echo the way people actually argue about change. “We do not know how to believe,” Anthony sings, and Thomson sets it to a melody that sounds like a child learning a scale. The simplicity is a trap.
There is no recording of the original 1947 production. The first complete studio recording didn’t appear until 1998 on Nonesuch, conducted by the composer’s longtime champion, the Australian pianist and conductor Raymond Leppard.
That version features baritone John Orth in the role of Jo the Loiterer, and mezzo-soprano Wendy Hill as Angel More. But the real star is Thomson’s writing for the chorus — block chords that lean forward and pull back, like a crowd that can’t decide whether to applaud or riot.
The Politics of Sound
Thomson was one of the few American composers who understood that politics could be encoded in musical grammar, not just in lyrics. He chose simple, tonal materials not because he lacked sophistication, but because he wanted the clarity of a presidential address.
The character of Susan B. Anthony sings in long, declamatory lines that rarely land on the tonic. She is always a half-step away from resolution. That is the whole opera in a single gesture — a woman who cannot rest because the work is not done.
Stein’s text includes a scene where Anthony meets Ulysses S. Grant and Daniel Webster, historical anachronisms that feel like a fever dream. Thomson sets it as a square dance. The absurdity is deliberate. American history, he argued, is a series of collisions between the sacred and the cartoonish.
The orchestra is small — winds, brass, piano, and strings — and Thomson uses the piano almost like a continuo instrument, a carryover from the Baroque. It gives the whole thing a clean, airless quality, like an old daguerreotype that has been overexposed.
There is a moment near the end when Anthony sings “We cannot retrace our steps” over a rising figure in the violins. It is the only moment where Thomson allows himself anything resembling romanticism. It lasts maybe thirty seconds. Then the march returns.
What to Listen For
Pay attention to the handling of the final scene. After Anthony has died — offstage, naturally — her ghost returns to deliver a monologue that is one of the strangest closings in American opera. She speaks as a statue, an icon, a frozen figure in a public square. Thomson writes music that is almost motionless, just a held chord and a few wisps of woodwind.
Stein’s text: “Do you think because I am a statue I have no feeling?” The answer, in the music, is no. The statue has more feeling than anyone alive.
That is the trick of The Mother of Us All. It sounds like a children’s pageant until the moment it cuts your breath short.
🎵 Key Takeaways
- Music like a Sunday hymnbook rewritten by a Parisian provocateur.
- Score uses blocks of plain diatonic harmony like cut felt.
- Thomson places tunes side by side, no European development.
- Libretto completed on Stein's 72nd birthday; she died eight days later.
- Aria 'We do not know how to believe' uses childlike scale melody.
Is The Mother of Us All really an opera about Susan B. Anthony?
Yes and no. The character is named Susan B. Anthony, and she fights for women's suffrage, but Stein and Thomson use her as a vehicle for a much broader meditation on fame, death, and historical memory. The opera includes scenes with Ulysses S. Grant and Daniel Webster that have no basis in historical fact.
Why is the music so simple?
Thomson deliberately chose simple hymn-like material because he wanted the words to be fully intelligible and the drama to feel like an American pageant. He distrusted the complexity of European modernism and believed that directness was more powerful. The simplicity is a calculated artistic choice, not a limitation.
What's the best recording to start with?
The 1998 Nonesuch recording conducted by Raymond Leppard (catalog 79484) is the only complete studio version and remains the gold standard. It features excellent singers and a clean, warm sound that respects Thomson's clarity. Local library archives may hold radio broadcasts of the 1947 premiere, but they are bootleg quality.
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