Four Saints in Three Acts

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June 26, 2026

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Four Saints in Three Acts is an opera with a libretto by Gertrude Stein and music by Virgil Thomson. Stein completed the libretto in 1927, and Thomson composed the score, which was orchestrated in 1933. The opera premiered in 1934.

Set in 16th-century Spain, the opera is plotless and features characters including St. Teresa of Ávila, St. Ignatius of Loyola, and two fictional saints, St. Settlement and St. Chavez. Stein was an avant-garde American writer known for her Paris salon, which was a gathering place for artists and writers between the World Wars. Her experimental writing style, influenced by Cubism, focused on the present moment and used repetition and fragmentation.

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Gertrude Stein
…the United States of her Four Saints in Three Acts (1934), which the composer Virgil Thomson had made into an opera, led to a triumphal American lecture tour in 1934–35. Thomson also wrote the music for her second opera, The Mother of Us All (published 1947), based on the life…
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…the United States of her Four Saints in Three Acts (1934), which the composer Virgil Thomson had made into an opera, led to a triumphal American lecture tour in 1934–35. Thomson also wrote the music for her second opera, The Mother of Us All (published 1947), based on the life…
Read More