SOURCE: Albrinck, Meg. “‘How can a sister see Saint Therese suitably’: Difficulties in Staging Gertrude Stein's Four Saints in Three Acts.” Women's Studies, Special Issue: Studies in 20th-Century American Literature, Criticism, and Art 25, no. 1 (1995): 1-22.

In the following essay, Albrinck analyzes how the scenario written for the 1934 production of Four Saints in Three Acts manipulates the meaning and themes of Stein's libretto by showing how the scenario's framework compromises both the “fluidity” and “powerful female vision” of the original.

Most critical studies of Gertrude Stein's opera Four Saints in Three Acts have either focused solely upon the original 1927 libretto or the 1934 stage production of the opera. Although these studies are helpful in understanding each version of the libretto, they fail to analyze how the scenario manipulates the meanings and themes of the original text. While Virgil Thomson's musical score and Maurice Grosser's scenario do provide additional layers of...