SFist Reviews: Four Saints in Three Acts

33. (L-R) Brooke Muñoz (foreground), Nicole Takesono, J. Raymond Meyers, Eugene Brancoveanu, and Brendan Hartnett in Four Saints in Three Acts: An Opera Installation, 2011; an Ensemble Parallèle production presented by SFMOMA in association with YBCA; photo: Steve DiBartolomeo, Westside Studio Images

You can't swing a cat without hitting a Gertrude Stein happening in this city. The Summer of Stein sprouted two exhibits about the queer icon (and her family) at the Contemporary Jewish Museum and the SFMOMA; and now an opera production at the Yerba Buena Novellus Theater of the Gertrude Stein/Virgil Thomson collaboration, Four Saints in Three Acts, performed by the Ensemble Parallele team.

It's actually a dozen Saints, four acts (the last act is undeniable, "that's a fact") and two operas. The wrong arithmetic in the title should give you an idea that it does not all make sense, as it should with Gertrude. Two operas: Ensemble Parallele performed the 50s revised version of the Four Saints opera, which clocks in at a breezy 50 minutes, rather than the original, twice-as-long, 1934 version. So they pre-pended the work with a palimpsest by Italian composer Luciano Chessa (who teaches his craft at the SF Conservatory).

Chessa took some of the cuts from the two Four Saints version and used the text as libretto for A Heavenly Act; Chessa also get inspired by the music of Thomson, but he, and the production team, went for full contrast with Four Saints: the Heavenly Act is as dark and static as Four Saints is bright, fresh and propulsive. Heavenly uses Stein's text, or so we trust, as for a long while we could not make anything out of the sung words, except for "suddenly I see." Chessa weaves together monochrome psalmodies, a decadent circus waltz, a wild gospel, but it lacked the energy of its original counterpart to transcend the caricatures and unite these disparate elements.

(L-R) Heidi Moss and Jonathan Smucker in Four Saints in Three Acts: An Opera Installation, 2011; an Ensemble Parallèle production presented by SFMOMA in association with YBCA; photo: Steve DiBartolomeo, Westside Studio Images

We could hear Stein's text quite clearly in Four Saints, but it's a Lorem Ipsum of a libretto. Excerpt: "Short longer grass short longer longer shorter yellow grass. Pigeons large pigeons on the shorter longer yellow grass alas pigeons on the grass." It did not make much sense to us, but it is fun, in a gently surrealist way, underlined by the witty stage direction. Just let go of understanding, and play along, we advised ourselves, and we enjoyed the play. The music is full of humor, light, very economical yet varied and always exciting.

And for all the hoopla about Stein, it's really the musical performance which takes the precedence over the written word: Nicole Paiement leads with great care and precision. Counting the proper number of bars in the most minimalist moments seemed almost strenuous. Yet the twenty musician orchestra was flawless, always springing forward.

The singers are uniformly excellent even though they span the whole range from current SF Conservatory students (Maya Kherani, or Kristen Choi, both skilled beyond their years) to Tony Award winning artists such as Eugene Brancoveanu (Saint Ignatius). It's a cast of mostly equals, except for St Teresa I (Heidi Moss) and Ignatius, who shoulder a slightly heavier load. Compère (John Bischoff) and Commère (Wendy Hillhouse) act as He- and She-Masters of Ceremonies, with perfect comic timing to boot.

The show runs two more times, Saturday night and for a Sunday matinee.

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