The opera about Susan B. Anthony, composed by Virgil Thomson with libretto by Gertrude Stein, will be sung at Rutgers.
By: Susan Van Dongen
In the opera The Mother of Us All, the characters are historic giants such as Daniel Webster, Ulysses S. Grant and Susan B. Anthony. They’re on stage at the same time singing, appearing as though they’re responding to each other. Listen carefully, though often Ms. Anthony and the other women are putting their thoughts out there, but the men are not listening. When the women are done, the men pick up the dialogue, then turn the subject back to themselves, as though they haven’t heard anything at all.
For Judith Nicosia, associate professor of music at Mason Gross School of the Arts, and Ann Gordon from the Institute for Women’s Leadership at Rutgers-New Brunswick, the lack of connection seems familiar. It might as well not be between figures in history, but a typical exchange between a wife and a tuned-out husband.
"In a way, the opera is conventional, the harmonies are conventional," Ms. Nicosia says. "It’s not avant-garde except for the sense that the characters aren’t addressing each other. They’re addressing the audience in what turns out to be non-sequiturs. They are not talking to each other. They’re commenting on each other’s thoughts, but not conversationally.
"For example, Daniel Webster and Susan B. Anthony have this long duet but they never sing together," she continues. "He’s singing snippets from various speeches, which shows you the man and his style of oratory. This is what Susan was fighting against politicians and their bluster and agenda and it was a real uphill battle."
There’s a scene where Ms. Anthony deliberates about how difficult her mission is. It’s a dream where she seeks assistance from men who can’t or won’t help her, including a black man whom she helped enfranchise. The chorus of Mr. Webster and other famous men ignore Ms. Anthony’s pleas while exclaiming their own importance. Some critics and historians suspected composer Virgil Thomson was spoofing Gilbert and Sullivan.
Ms. Gordon has another theory, though.
"I think it’s pure ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus,’" she says. "Daniel Webster is singing a whole lot of his rhetorical flourishes and then Anthony sings something completely different. Without being overt, you have people talking right past each other."
"(The politicians) were working hard to make sure the vote (for women) didn’t get through and that’s one of the things that librettist Gertrude Stein recognizes," Ms. Gordon continues. "Part of Anthony’s remarkableness is that she persisted despite this."
To mark the centennial of the death of Susan B. Anthony, the Institute for Women’s Leadership and the Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, Rutgers-New Brunswick, are sponsoring lectures, a film screening and dramatic and musical performances to explore Susan B. Anthony’s legacy of political, social and economic activism.
As part of the centennial, the IWL, the Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony and the music department of the Mason Gross School of the Arts will present The Mother of Us All at the Nicholas Music Center, on the Douglass campus of Rutgers University in New Brunswick Sept. 29.
"I edit the papers of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and it seemed a pity to not use the occasion to pull together a look at ways we could draw attention to Ms. Anthony as an amazing figure in United States history," Ms. Gordon says.
Recounting Susan B. Anthony’s fight for women’s political rights, the opera has all the wit and playfulness of its creators Mr. Thomson, the great American composer, and feminist expatriate Ms. Stein. First performed in 1947, Mr. Thomson’s music blends American marches, hymns and folk melodies.
"It’s a mosaic," Ms. Nicosia says. "There are sentimental songs, marches and hymns but they’re always used expressively for example, the last section of the opera has a hymn tune that is quite lovely."
Blurring the lines between past and present, fact and fiction, Ms. Stein’s libretto brings Ms. Anthony into conversation with such real and imaginary figures as Webster, Lillian Russell and Indiana Elliott. While The Mother of Us All explores Ms. Anthony historically, the opera also asks modern audiences to evaluate her legacy in contemporary terms. In this way, the performance fits in perfectly with the centennial celebration of Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906).
"It’s been the apple in the IWL’s eye for a long time," Ms. Nicosia says.
"Since last year we’ve been having a series of events at Rutgers to celebrate this," Ms. Gordon says. "What we decided to do was focus on something other than the historical Susan. We wanted to focus on her legacy what was it that she left to do and what have people done? She wrote ‘women must be up and doing’ and this was in 1901 when she was very old. So, even then, she was pointing forward to what women need to do.
"(We) identified topics (Susan B. Anthony promoted) that still have relevance, for example, international work among women, women in political office and general activism," she continues. "The focus of the celebration is to bring in modern people reflecting on various things that she did, and the values she held."
The opera, with more than two dozen characters, is musically daunting and also a challenge as far as the language and speed in which the singers interact. Ms. Nicosia humorously calls it "dodgeball singing."
"Characters drop in for a few bars and come back much later," she says. "People are constantly sitting down and standing up, but the piece rides on Susan B. Anthony. It’s unusual because it doesn’t really have arias, just little duets that weave in and out, but very rarely do the characters sing together it’s in the form of dialogue. So it’s unusual for singers who are used to arias, duos and trios."
Since one of Ms. Stein’s literary techniques was the use of repetition she is the author behind the phrase "a rose is a rose is a rose" Ms. Nicosia says she is strongly emphasizing diction to the singers.
"(Gertrude Stein) scholar Catharine Stimpson will give a lecture before the opera to give the audience an idea of what they are about to hear," Ms. Nicosia says. "It’s mostly a straight story line, but there is a certain amount of repetition, which has very subtle inflections. So if people know what they’re listening for it’s better, especially since we don’t have subtitles."
Ms. Stimpson, who also produced the opera, is a professor of English literature and dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at New York University and founder of the feminist journal Signs. The opera, which will be performed as a concert not staged is conducted by Andrew Cyr and sung by a combination of professional vocalists from the New Brunswick-New York metropolitan area and students from Mason Gross.
The subject of the opera is Ms. Anthony’s life-long struggle to gain voting privileges and civil rights for women in the U.S. She died before the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution became law on Aug. 26, 1920.
The opera premiered May 7, 1947, at Columbia University, commissioned by the Alice M. Ditson Fund.
When Mr. Thomson approached Ms. Stein about the commission, he suggested a look at political life in 19th century America. Enthusiastically receptive, Ms. Stein chose Ms. Anthony as the centerpiece of the work. Ms. Anthony’s struggle to gain legal respect for American women by obtaining full civil rights parallels Ms. Stein’s struggle for recognition as a serious artist.
This work is the second opera collaboration between Ms. Stein and Mr. Thomson who, like Ernest Hemingway and Ms. Stein, had an on-again, off-again friendship and professional relationship.
"Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein had worked together very successfully," Ms. Gordon says. "When she liked him, she thought he was good at understanding what to do musically with her work, especially since she wasn’t writing narrative prose."
Ms. Stein finished the libretto but didn’t live long enough to see the opera performed.
With Ms. Anthony’s character bumping up against so many larger-than-life men of history often being ignored by them you wonder whether Ms. Stein was commenting about the suffragette’s struggles to be validated in a male dominated society.
Ms. Gordon says yes, but adds a different perspective.
"Stein is also reminding us of Anthony’s importance," Ms. Gordon says. "Stein is placing her in this cast of well-known male names like John Adams and Daniel Webster. Susan B. Anthony is there too she’s part of American history."
The Mother of Us All, by Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein, will be sung at the Nicholas Music Center, Douglass Campus, 85 George St., New Brunswick, Sept. 29, 7:30 p.m. Tickets cost $25, $20 seniors/Rutgers alumni and employees. For information, call (732) 932-7511. On the Web: iwl.rutgers.edu

