Good afternoon. This is Bill Parker speaking to you from the stage of a Shaughnessy Auditorium in st. Paul where this weekend the Minnesota Opera company will be giving its production of the mother of us all and Opera with text by Gertrude Stein and music by Virgil Thomson. I'm going to be talking about this event with for distinguished guests who are seated here on stage before a live audience who along with you listening at home will be posing some questions as we go along. This special live broadcast is made possible in part with funds provided by the Minnesota Humanities commission to the Minnesota Opera Company. As narrator of the Sunday afternoon Opera programs on Minnesota Public Radio. My usual task is to tell the story of the Opera. But today I have the pleasure of forgoing that Duty as we allow the significance of this Unusual Work to unfold itself for the insights of our panel consisting of dr. Gretchen Crider. Dr. Susan B. Anthony II the Reverend Elaine Marsh and Maestro Philip. Brunelle. In addition we have with us today 10 or Evan Bortnick who is going to sing a bit of the music that makes up the Opera. What is unusual about the mother of us all well first? It's an American Opera which immediately places it in a rather small and select category. Then it has a unique literary style the inimitable style of poet Gertrude Stein. And it has an unusual subject matter for an opera a nostalgic Panorama of nineteenth-century America with an emphasis on the historical character of Susan B. Anthony the first and the struggle for women's rights. Today will be examining the Contemporary implications of the Opera its place in the evolution of ideas. The first we need to know something of the past for which we turn to our first panelist. Dr. Gretchen Crider coordinator of women's studies at St. Olaf's College a specialist in the history of women and women's movement. Dr. Kreider, my first question is not even a rhetorical one. Who were Pioneer Women? What did they do? And how did Susan B Anthony fit into that category if she did? Well, they're really there really two kinds of pioneer women. There's the kind of pioneer woman who who often nearly froze to death on the Minnesota Frontier and worked very hard died young had many children Etc. And and she's always been very much honored in our history. But there's another there's another meaning to the word pioneer means the one who goes before preparing the way for others and that's the sense in which Susan B Anthony was a Pioneer and unfortunately those Pioneers have not always been as admired and respected as those who who did all of the things I mentioned a minute or so ago Susan B. Anthony was Perhaps the foremost leader of the first generation of American feminists. She was born in 1820 and lived on into the twentieth century. She became involved in the feminist movement in the in the early 1850s and from than virtually until the day of her death. She worked for the achievement of women's rights women's equality in America. We tend to associate Susan B. Anthony. I think she flee with with getting the vote for women with women suffrage, but that isn't really that isn't really accurate because Susan B Anthony was interested in a wide variety of rights for women. She was interested in in legal reform divorce reform custody rights property rights and so on for women the whole range of Public and private rights and so as I say it. Although, her name has become associated with the suffrage the amendment itself was originally called the Anthony Amendment her own concerns went far beyond merely the vote. She was also in some sense is unusual for early American feminists in that she had a deep concern for the rights of working women. She was concerned about equal pay for equal work. She she was involved with a couple of the early women's women's unions. So she really the breadth of her concern is I think what would Marx was one of the things that marks her is a Pioneer and I thinking that since she she did prepare the way for others who have gone since and really is very much like the Contemporary feminist generation. I think which concerns itself with with a very wide variety of right. I wonder how she'd think of herself as a prima donna. I don't suppose she planned to become the heroine of an opera and the time in her life, but she has I have in front of me a page from the Miami Herald December 1st. The issue this past year as a picture here. Someone who looks very familiar as I sit here are the headlines suffragettes namesake drawers convention stairs. We have with us today. As I said Susan B Anthony II who is the grand niece of the Susan B Anthony of History? Dr. Anthony has had a long and distinguished career. Recently, she was the bearer of the ceremonial torch at the women's meeting in Houston, Texas. That's where people stared at you I guess. We won't do that today about 2. We're very pleased to have you and would like to know. What Susan B Anthony was really like as a person so far as you know. Parker I didn't know her I missed her by ten years. You see she died in 1960 and I was born in 1916. But of course, I grew up under the shadow of that great name on a very simple small town girl whom I was but I heard about her through the day. I was born I ate off her table to this day. I eat all from Mahogany table when I go home. I wrote her desk, which is now in a museum and it was filled with the lore of this woman, especially the impact on my father who is her nephew and I've written about all of this in my book The Ghost of my life because she was sort of like a ghost standing over my left shoulder at that time of my life and she was and this is what I love about the Opera the mother of us all that in addition to being this great Crusader this Great Bridge. Heroic revolutionary of her time she was a very tender materially oriented woman caught that quality in the Opera was very few people historians are other our biographers have and that's what I love about the offering him. Looking forward to seeing it again so much for that reason because in addition to the side of her cuz it could take the Rotten Tomatoes need eggs to make hatred the Venom which was thrown at her for this revolutionary caused the two cousins originally abolition of feminism. She had that armor, but then the other side of her the mother of us all the unmarried matriarch cuz I used to call her was the the Aunt Susan to not only my father and my aunts but to a large number of young people. She loved the little one be on our way and be afflicted the lowly and women were in that category and it was this tenderness in his maternal. Plantation plus the great public Napoleon had a few Rotten Tomatoes in your career to I believe you've been active in the labor reform and minority rights most of your life and social issues. Yes. I was a victim of the McCarthy era for 15 years. I was deprived of the vote, but I'm Susan one. That's another story. That is a quite ironic. The Reverend Elaine Marsh is with us. Also this morning. She is a pastor at Plymouth Congregational Church in Minneapolis and has been a devotee for many many years of the poet the poetess shall we say, we wrote the script Libretto for the Opera at hand. Reverend Marcia, why did Gertrude Stein take an interest in Susan B Anthony? Well, it seems to me that this was a very natural kind of interest for a Gertrude Stein to have I think they they very simple way of saying this is that she admired this woman because she had a great deal of courage. Gertrude Stein, I think always admired courage and I think particularly in women. She regarded Susan B Anthony as a Pioneer at one who carried on as we have heard a kind of battle against Great odds for something important and other certain is a sense in which Gertrude was a Pioneer because she really spent her life a writing what people didn't care to read doing things with words that people didn't understand and yet she had great fortitude in the face of all of this and so I think that she admired her Courage the fact that she was a Pioneer and I can't Overlook the fact that Gertrude Stein while she lived in France most of her life. Had a great feeling about America and about Americans and so she would I think these are a combination of things that would almost naturally have attracted her to a person like Susan B, Anthony. And Phil Burnell the director of the Minnesota Opera Company with us today also like to ask you Maestro how this all wound up in music. Well, I think that you were right bill at the beginning and saying that it is one of the unique works in the American opera scene because indeed there is no other Opera in the Opera lore quite like the mother of us all there are of course only two large works that even use the Poetry of Gertrude Stein and both of them of course are by Virgil Thompson for the music the other being his earlier work for Saints in three acts, which was also to a Gertrude Stein libretto, but I think that in the in the mother of us, all Virgil Thompson was able to capture the essential style. He understood and from the very first meetings with the Gertrude Stein he loved what she did. He loved language so much and Gertrude Stein a course of language and a two And Together made I think a very natural pair partly because he was concerned that music support the words and be an equal and that the music not take over and make the words less than what they ought to be. I think the best quote I know about virgel Thompson's music as one that Aaron Copland wrote 30 years ago in his book on musica in general and he said Virgil Thompson is a composer who knows exactly what he wants. He is the first American who sense of the English language seems really a cute his vocal line is based on the rhythmic flexibility and natural inflection of human speech and may well serve as a model for future composers and I think that this is very true. It's an opera those who are used to going to an opera in which as Common in 19th and 18th century operas. The text was repeated and repeated many many times over in the mother of us. All the words are said once so you'd best to write up hard because they aren't repeated again and it isn't just that since it's also just a sense that the from the very beginning you have the idea that Virgil Thompson knew exactly what he wanted to do and how he wanted to get it said that this does not mean that it is easy to understand every line of the Opera. In fact, I'd like to have Evan Bortnick give us a one section right now from the mother of us all the there are several sections which deal specifically with areas of a concern about particular rights for women, but not always are these little sections of particularly clear unless you stop and understand and think a little bit about the language which is Gertrude Stein and that you get into as you hear the Opera think that's the very opening if I can just take one second and say that when you listen to the opening prologue, I'm sure that you anyone who does not know the Opera the first five minutes absolutely throw you for a loop and it's my understanding and belief that Gertrude Stein was deliberately trying to was deliberately trying to have everyone just be completely Throwing out their usual concept of what language can mean and what words can mean and say listen to me. But listen to me on my own terms, but shortly after that it comes this little part which I'm going to have Evan sing which talks about the the role of women in the home. To be funny you have to take everything in the kitchen and put it on the floor. You have to take all your money and all your You have to go to bed. Was she funny? Yes. She was funny. Thank you. Evan will have more excerpts along the way of the music. We might mention at this point that we will accept questions today if you become intrigued by this topic and have some ideas. If you are listening in the radio audience, you can call your question. If you're a local listener to the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area here call 221-1550 if you're an out-of-state caller. Outside of the Twin Cities local dialing area you can call on our Watts line one 800-652-9700 and if you're really dedicated and our long-distance dialer and dial one 612-221-1500. Those calls will go into our studios in St. Paul and be related to me hear. Meanwhile, if any of you in our audience have questions. You're welcome to go round through that door over there. Come down the lower entrance and walk up to the microphone. And what was your question? I think Bill you might do at this point to have you Lain breath to say a word about that previous remark of Gertrude Stein's because certainly I think of sentence like to be funny you have to take everything in the kitchen and put it on the floor might not present itself as being particularly clear. Yes, we are going to have to examine the meaning of if any of some of these lines. Well, I'm sure these lend themselves to a variety of interpretations with some of us discuss this the other day and Gertrude Stein had a real Keen feeling about money. She said I've always wanted to be rich but I've never wanted to do the things required to becoming rich but she seemed to have the feeling that when women married they they gave up materially what they had. That's true today at some extent. I would say to concerning property, but apparently at least one feeling here is that when a woman marry you she takes her Jewels money and all these things and puts them on the kitchen floor. And about being funny at this is often sought to express her feeling about the very feminine side of women who who want to cater to men and that they're more attractive this way than if they were serious. And so this probably I have something to do with with all of that. How about her style though in general? Why did she write as she did and what what what does it mean or it doesn't mean anything or how does it mean something to Stein was not so much a writer who produced literature but rather a scientist who who use words as one uses other items in a laboratory her training was not in the Arts, but in medicine having spent five years at Johns Hopkins Medical School also in Psychology at Radcliff, she came to the feeling that words have a life of their own outside their dictionary meaning and that wears it becomes him with fossilized during the Victorian era therefore. She wanted to give life to them. She wanted them to have rhythm and color and sound. She said sentences are emotional but paragraphs are meaning that they Rhythm Rhythm can be generated in paragraphs. She used this location words. She Twisted sentences trying to squeeze all kinds of meetings out of them. Also since she was very much interested in painters. Although she had no interest in painting herself that she sometimes use words and repetitious Manor in the same way a painter uses brushstrokes. So I think we have all of these things going to create an atmosphere. I think the word happening is when the Gertrude Stein would've understood the creation of a of a sense of a happening an event and words were used as tools that Cross musicians use repetition and Rhythm and those things as well and no doubt this survey musical quality. I've got your science writing is what appealed to Rachel Thompson. And that's how we wound up with the Opera. It's a singers Opera. Housing apple is it? So I think that it's extremely singable the problem of annunciation in a language isn't any different for the Virgil Thompson softer than it would be for any other offer in English. And certainly it is it is set in a way that for the majority of it. It's very it's very vocal we say I think there are a few places that are difficult but then there are few places that are vocally difficult or awkward in in just any Opera but most of it is set in such a way that the words come across very clearly and that and that I think Thompson did achieve what he wanted to do and that is to make the words feel like a natural that the singing with a natural extension of speaking so that Susan B Anthony comes across Not as a singer, but as the woman she was that you don't have the feeling. I mean, she's not you don't have the feeling of someone being divorced from the real person. She was trying to be and then those qualities that we were that dr. Anthony mentioned in of Susan B. Come across very well in in the music and in the words that the gentleness is there and yet it all feels like I just a part of what this person was and you don't feel that you're just hearing someone singing an oratorio or something of that nature. Susan B. Anthony more than any other leader of the women's rights movement was criticized vilified. She was the butt of cartoonists and is I think dr. Anthony mentioned earlier those human qualities of warmth, which witch went with the real person tended to tend to get lost at the hands of the caricaturist and to have them restored in some measure is Israel in a cheap mint. I think it's like he who has the role of a Susan B Anthony in our production. We were coming the other day. That one doesn't have to play Susan B Anthony always as staunch with with Lord Shen. I mean Susan be in this Opera smiles and why not? You know that mean there are times for that kind of want their other times. When of course she was driving a point home and And very serious kind of medic but there are the times in which she can just simply Revel in the the happiness in the humor of the particular moment at hand and I think that's quality. TouchWiz shown particularly when she was arrested for voting and if she carried through that whole difficult. From November 1872 until her trial in June of 1873. Now a lesser woman would have I haven't been through prolong litigation with my own human rights in this Century. I know how you can get what I call litigation syndrome where you feel harassed and persecuted by the FBI or the CIA or whatever and she was harassed and she had to get permission from the US Marshal to leave Rochester New York to make a lecture. She was treated like a common criminal for those month, but she did it with a very gay happy sort of way of doing it laughing at it when he stood on the platform as she left town on the railroad platform. And again the other qualities you mention I think come from her marvelous breeding by her great father who Daniel who was a Quaker and who was really Smolder about Susan because he he he love this child this child who was handicapped at an early age by a vision defect and who he made up for it with his special love and attention. But he also gave her the enormous tradition of the Society of Friends, which of course this great prediction of personal change and social change where women had a measure of Freedom even in the 19th century in the society. So she had that spiritual quality that inner light which I think the leading party if you would ask me that I think I would on Susan is Brazilian she bounced back when whenever I've been flattened which I've been flattened so often in my life rejected put down all that. She's been a real model for me and that right up till the day. She died you say she was what you know, she could have been considered a failure because she has not won her life work and yet when she gave her last public speech she That Immortal phrase 3 weeks before she died and she said with women such as these failure is impossible like that. You think then that the picture of her in the Opera is a reasonable want an accurate one give the sense of her. Real character. It's not a question of accuracy. Because if that's the genius of the artist that they don't don't attempt inaccuracy, but she gets the qualities. She got the feeling of answers and I love the the mixing of the generations and the people that it's just a beautiful thing to see in the end. She gets the the heroism of those women to do at least we're here about women speaking of the mixture of things the anachronisms in the Opera. Could you explain how that works for matically or why it is Phil. Yeah, we have we have here people in the story who live in totally different times in history. Daniel Webster is consorting with Susan B, Anthony and so far that is this just some fancy or does have a point or well, of course that that part of it was Gertrude Stein's doing and when the Opera was written back in the nineteen forty-five and when was put together they were trying to come up with the as was mentioned by Reverend Marsh the the idea of a of a of a topic American would have appealed to Gertrude Stein a great deal, but what she didn't want to do someone like George Washington, I can't remember why but they were reading something about if you thought that was just a really not a good subject at all for an opera George Washington, but ain't nobody loves George, Washington anymore. Sure, just why Susan B Anthony was her topic, but the fact was that when she did decide it was going to be Susan B Anthony. It was with a Vigor and Vengeance and I mean it was just done. I mean there wasn't any kind of oil. I wonder if I should have done this and Virgil Thompson says when he got them when you got the text it was obvious that this is what it should have been and that it was a very American kind of topic. I think that the Stein in trying to put together a libretto and trying to call the ideas the the the woman that was Susan B Anthony to the four didn't because she was the creative genius that she was didn't resort to only those people who were living. I mean, why couldn't you just call up some of the past so they weren't together big deal. I mean, it doesn't really matter. I don't think it's Party by Design because she rejected the whole linear concept of movement. She really didn't like plays very well because she said you're always sitting there wondering what's coming next. And therefore you do not have these intense moments that had to do with her concept of the continuing present and therefore it was natural to mix people up so that you don't have a chronological linear progression of events. I think that would be part of it. And what we have done in this production is to change only one aspect. None of the words are changed and the text is given in total but rather than having a cast of 27 people parading across the stage in what amounts to a pageant I've seen that production that way and the big problem you have with 27 people is that in an opera of this length? It's not a particularly long piece. It takes two acts and each act as just a bit under an hour. With 27 people you can rest assured that it's very difficult to figure out what's going on because there are so many people that you know, you're trying to get the characters straight in this difficult. What has happened is that all of the lines are spoken but the cast size has been narrowed down. So that attitudes are presented and the philosophy of the work comes across but it is clarified by not having to do associate yourself with quite so many people and try to figure out who's who and what's what I think the best example I have of this when we did this very production eight years ago at Hunter College in New York City a woman came up to me at the end of the evening and she said all mr. Brunell. I was in the first production in 1947, and she said I can tell you that if the Opera had been In 1947 the way you are doing it with this size cast and it's also clear. She said I can tell you it would have had a much greater success earlier on but that gets it was baffling because of its of the need to figure out what was happening that really she kept it and it's a cast member from from being as well-known early on as it then became but I also feel build a part of the problem of the Opera early on was that suit that not only Susan B Anthony herself, but Gertrude Stein was really ahead of her time and even eight years ago when we did it there are there were sections in the Opera that though we said, yes, we we understood what they were saying. We didn't understand but they weren't really things that we were dealing with it in terms of present. Dave. Let me give you one example if I could have Evan sing another example This has to do with the whole idea of women changing their name and eight years ago. There was some of that going on but still you really if you think back to eight years ago, there was not a lot of women marrying but keeping their own name that really hadn't come into the with a kind of force that we have and here 30 years ago. Gertrude Stein has the very same kind of thing and he was just another little except the character of the lawyer in which he wants to marry this woman, but she won't change your name to his which of course was the way that it was supposed to be. You will not take mine is not all the same. She says that she Indiana. Why I'm Joe and that she will not take more. Hell yes. Just wright. Of course, she is right. He is not all the same. Indiana Elliott is her name. There is no difference that I can see. bought all the same I'm sure she will not change Hyundai. Yes, it is. all the same Thank you. Thanks also to yell Marshall who is our accompanist today, by the way, I don't think I mentioned him while we're thinking of the historical implications here why or why not the Opera was successful back in 1947 and its contemporaneity. how to ask Either or both of dr. Anthony and dr. Crider. What are the differences or similarities between feminists of Susan b's day and the current movement? How contemporary is the moral issue in the Opera? Or is it that I can I dated them you were between a city block given to the media and the three first ladies and all the leading women of America and National Women's convention including Margaret Mead and I have made my maiden speech is a feminist to the conference in 1945 possibly a hundred women that was not even noticed in the Press. I published two books on feminism in the forties which where where renowned for their obscurity and I have come a long and all I can say is we've come a long way and when the offer came out in 1947 at Columbia University, it couldn't even find a home on a proper Off Broadway Theater, but at a university and it was simply nobody could care if it's a bottom of the woman. Movement 1948 was midway 1920 to 1940 the 20-year slump which went on until 1966 roughly so that I think they were in the interest. I know I can follow it personally because I've been through years of when I didn't use the name at all during several marriages and I didn't use the name but then I've come back to it after divorce. And when I came back to it this last time it was still before the Revival of the women's movement and I could go around it was like being Incognito almost I say by name so what you know now as recently as last night at the hotel where I'm staying when they they asked for my name and my room key or something and I said Susan and I didn't even say Susan B does waitress have Susan B Anthony Almost household names and this to me is Marva since I say my own book on my life with the ghost. The ghost of my life has been up 7 years has had no nipples until now from Hollywood and television because I wasn't that interested Face women's movement has built up so that this is a very contemporary thing is as contemporary as tomorrow's newspaper because it has all the issues and has all the feminism and the tragedy is that we have gained so little since the Anthony amendment was ratified in 1920 and that we're still struggling in my adopted State of Florida for the ratification of era, which I might add. Which amendment 15 years after be ratified by the rest of the country. So we still have a long way to go. I'm glad you That should to make us wary of the linear view of history. That is so the the fate of women's rights in this country because it hasn't been in here. It really has been almost cyclical and Susan B. Anthony herself saw rights once granted in the state of New York taken away again, 10 years later. And so while it's a it certainly is so cost for great enthusiasm to see that that these names mean something today and that these Clauses mean something today. It isn't something that's happening automatically or that will continue to happen automatically. Well as you say the Equal Rights Amendment is an example of The spirit of Susan B Anthony the first Is With Us by the way, I'm at home if you listen to the radio you can't see but we have a wonderful and of a statue behind us here. Susan B. Anthony's part of the set of the Opera, but you can see when you come this weekend. We hope you will I do want to repeat the phone numbers for those who would like to address any questions by calling into dr. Anthony. Crater and I are the panelists if you were our local color in the Twin Cities dial 221-1550 if you are out State and not a local dialer call one 800-652-9700 doesn't cost anything that's a free waps line and will be glad to accept questions also from you in the audience. Anyone wants to step up to the frightening microphone there. Susan B. Anthony I understand was considered by some historians at least in previous years is more of a footnote to history than an important person is reflected it all in the Opera when she is put aside. At the end of the Opera and stands over in the corner that what that symbolizes or I didn't know how to take that exactly. Well though. I have never read a biography of all the way through of a Susan B. Anthony. I must confess that my information initially, of course, it goes back to whatever we were taught during our high school years though. I had a very forward-looking high school or after Junior High School English and social studies teacher and I remember that in seventh grade the month of February was devoted to February grates, and it was Washington Lincoln and Anthony were the three we had and that's February 15th incidentally and it celebrated. I've just come from Alaska and even celebrated in Juneau Alaska, which I think is rather nice. The the fact that there for that I would make and I may be totally wrong but it but I sense of what certainly Stein was writing is that Susan B when she did what she did for the women's movement was totally aware of the fact that she was ahead of her time and that much of what she advocated could not happen. When at the time that she was that she was alive and that it was quite likely that in the years ahead these things would come to pass but the incoming to pass she might be forgotten such a great sense of History by her father to keep every scrap of writing about the women's movement from the very beginning So to that we owe the Honduras massive six-volume history of woman suffrage, but she suffered through the Volume helping get together and and her own free volume biography with her biographer. I to Houston Harper she had and we also have a massive collection in the rare book room in the Library of Congress the University of Rochester at such a Tetra but it's so it wasn't for lack of her sense of historicity, but it was because they at that time just like black history women's history when I grew up which was many years before you the only I can remember a very dim gray engraving of this this figure this face of on Susan Bush People tended to put mustaches on you're not that kind of thing the mystery books and I think we except for the bid bid who gave us some belated recognition, but she was pretty much ignored until until the last 15 years except by her. Excellent biographies of which there were several which were just absolutely beautiful Catherine. Anthony's among them in the very end of the Opera. In the whole last scene, of course. She is all of her comments are she's off to the side. All of this is happening. They're all kind of looking at a statue of Susan B Anthony, but but it's a statue like any other Statue you're not relating it to the woman as much as just some action takes place and it just so happens that takes place near the statue until at the very end and I I think that the end of the Opera is one of the most beautifully conceived ends for any Opera that I know most operas have of course Beautiful Moments. It's one point or another but not all operas have beautiful endings. Sometimes they just wind down or wind up or are they just wind you know, but whatever but there's something about the way this Opera ends with the wonderful epilogue that's dying has written for Susan B Anthony to say and she says that the very end of it on the last page. Do you know because I tell you so or do you know because you know, Beautiful speaking of statues. Of course, I grew up laying wreaths on on Susan statues and an unveiling plaques and often during the years of my own Exile when I was a pariah to the US government because of my youthful activist positions on many things. I would often go to her statue in the capital of the United States and I think here I am and outside of being absolutely rejected by committee members the immigration other committee members and here is right here in the basement of the cap. Of course, they relegated the women's the basement. Naturally. They didn't have them on top that here. She was with Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and when I made my triumphal reentry Into public life again few years ago. It was my great thrilled to have part of the celebration right there with that statue done by a woman. And then again last year. I was honored to be invited to the birthday of the author of the Equal Rights Amendment just before she died. I was Paul and photograph with the bust of us Susan at the headquarters house where the amendment Equal Rights Amendment has been drafted in 1923. So there's that nice continuing present and finally at Houston. It was so beautiful when you speak of good roots done mixing Generations in centuries. I think all of us women is Houston of the great iwi National Women's Conference had this feeling of the continuing present all of us that they're near tears most of the time because we were aware not only of the first ladies of today, but I was aware constantly of the spirit of Aunt Susan Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott Margaret Fuller. Is Great Train of heroic women Pioneers in the women's movement pioneers and other ways like Gertrude Stein was an art and an independent creativity so that this is a very meaningful phrases to use for the for the women's movement to continue present. We all felt there with those young Runner these teenagers carry the torch from Seneca Falls and that my honor to receive the touch from them that we were in this long line from 1848 and that we we we we all had a sense of history and that sense of History drew the Venom of some of the opposition the opposition was still there, but the hatred was no longer there because even the opposition felt it that sense of the you continuing present sounds as if it fits in with designs Linear or non-linear circular style of writing also have to present to all of this is one big circle with those ghosts of the past moving about freely and still with us. Liam moral issues that are presented in the Opera May offend some people who don't believe in them. I suppose moral issues and works of art are often controversial. Some people say they can't be used the work of art has to be a fantasy and Escape only I think it's preachy or something some of the most famous operas of the standard Repertory. We remember how ever had that tremendous social and political implications when they came out. I offer that to those who say that Opera has no significance at all. Uncommon. I frequently hear from that one of her lovers, but then some of the Opera didn't even intend to come out that way of course them. Verdi got to the point where everything he said and did in music was taken in a political way because the initials of his name spelled out a political motto meaning of Victor Emmanuel king of Italy during the time of the Austrian occupation. So some harmless things that became important that way but do you all feel that the musical treatment of immoral theme is alright to how much how much of it is entertainment. And how much of it is deep meaning. How should we look at a musical work when we go to see it? Let me before we discuss it. Let me just have Evan introduced that last one. He there is a 1/3 exit which I think fits in very well right at this point and this is when Susan B Anthony has said in the second act of the Opera. She's talking to the man and she says tell me you men. You will never vote my laws even even if you pass them or even if the if they're past somehow, they won't really come to pass. They won't be voted. Is there anyone who can possibly here be honest and say that you really won't pass the laws and the character of Joe the lawyer again appears and says because you see I have no vote. No to be honest. Anyway, Susan B Anthony, what would it really be? I have no but myself, but I'll make her long as I don't change. My name don't have to change my name. Are we conditioned to text? Yes? We are talking today with panel of them distinguished experts on various Fields related to the Opera the mother of us all you missed the opening of our program we have with us today. Dr. Gretchen Crider coordinator of women's studies at St. Olaf's College. Dr. Susan B, Anthony to And the Reverend Elaine Marsh devotee of Gertrude Stein our the brightest and Maestro Philip brunelle director of Minnesota Opera Company and conductor of the production this weekend, which I'd like to have a little more information on for audience by the way, so they don't forget to go while the Opera bill is the mother of us all with text by Gertrude Stein and music by Virgil Thompson and it will be presented three times this Saturday evening at O'Shaughnessy Auditorium 8 p.m. On Sunday evening at 7 p.m. And then a week from Saturday on the 11th again at 8 p.m. And tickets can be a reservations can be made by calling the Minnesota Opera ticket office or through the Dayton's ticketoffices 221. Oh-256 is the Opera number. Also. The Opera will be broadcast. Live the Saturday night by Minnesota Public Radio that's us at 8 p.m. So we hope you will go and listen on the radio as well be absolutely can't go and you can can listen I'd be very interested to hear a continuation before Evan spoke of the other panelists as far as the moral issues. I mean, I'm involved with it because of always conducting offers and seeing it but from their point of you let me ask for a girl smiling go back to dr. Anthony doctor took so much time on my last answer. I think it's a very good question. Well, I I certainly see no reason why moral issue should not be should not be dealt with in in any of the art forms if they if They do not eclipse the art. And in this case, they they blend beautifully the music the words and the ideas. Ally field Chris the same way because I I think the especially in the case of feminism and Stein's choosing on Susan has her her stars are the characters are leaving person in the play in the Opera that she was going to the heart of social issues and one that had been largely ignored. I'm not an opera know. I know very little about a project. I've been saying all week. I wish my sister we're here in my in my shoes because she does know more about operant she herself as a singer but as far as I know, I don't think there's ever being a feminist Opera before perhaps there has been but they're being very few offers that I know of unless I say, I'm not a student and I are thinking like crazy when she did and more Power to Gertrude Stein for opening still another door and I think that it was so much needed because at that time they say they 47 when the offer was first produced the movement. Was it a real Mater? It was really a bottom and who knows it's just a little stirred cause them I had already been in the women's movement founding a woman's organization at that time, but it was confined to the left the middle class 3 upper thighs were paying the artistic classes with with the few exception of the great artist, but their neck on the Block and related blacklisted very few of them were thinking in terms of Human Rights civil rights are women's rights. And what's a mob is today that we are able to speak out and that they artists like Steins Opera. Susan and Hellman's great feminist film Julia, which I think is so great and also has that Mom is anti-fascist and a Nazi theme running through it that these things can be produced now and it while we're able to We should go ahead and do it before the next eclipse happens because I'm sure that it will seem right which is so Auntie woman and I would just love to say that while I have a child, but if you would analyze the opposition to the women's movement into such works of art as yours at the Minnesota Opera Company, they Stein off Ron. Susan that the opposition to the women movement is 90% extreme rightist opposition is not an anti-feminist per say it is Extreme, right that would bring the end of all rights, not just women's rights, but I noticed one of the questions we have here. So as compared the significance of the women's rights with a broader issue of human rights are human rights. Do not always mean Women's Rights Act and that is evident in the Opera when the one of the man when a black man is asked. Would you vote if women could not vote? I think this and he said Gee Whiz It's very exciting possibility. Obviously, he would vote but still he was permitted to vote but women were not so human rights may not at all include women. Right and you know right then and there at that very. And it right after the Civil War when I sue Smith knocked yourself out to get the Emancipation Proclamation made into the 13th Amendment with 400,000 petitions on the deal that the that they women would be in franchise along with the men right there. And then they said sorry sorry gal. You'll have to wait because giving women the vote would be so much more on popular than giving the blacks to vote that that we had. This is De Niro's I was so we had to wait from 1865 until 1920s. And ironically it was that very amendment that for first wrote the word mail into the Constitution. Goes back to an ancient tradition of garst take some time to uproot of speaking of operas that might be about running lots of offers about reformed courtesans do those count in until I think you have to say that though. There are some offers that deal with women than perhaps certain parts of feminism. I don't know of another offer that deals with the right to vote feminist women Joan of Arc, but I can't think of an opera Opera that speaks of it and makes it the central reason for having the Opera and for talking about it from that point of view. I mean certainly there is not there goes that it with that strength, you know. Legitimate play that doesn't know cuz they're either about queens or about courtesans issues of that sort as objects of ridicule or satire. And I mean that is there's a long tradition of that kind of thing in the Arts and an art form. I think for example that you know, you can take this all the way back to the first the first petition that that Susan B Anthony brought before the New York State Legislature. She'd spend the whole winter collecting thousands and thousands of signatures and asking certain changes in the law to provide for property rights and the legislature responded with with a very insulting reply which included the observation. We've noticed that that I must petition. The number of husbands and wives who have both sign their names. Well, they can begin right away to make these changes the husbands may put on the aprons and otherwise may put on the pants. Haha and of response to petition that kind of trivialization of these issues. I think it is Common from her day to ours but what we're seeing now well and what we see him in the night, yes is a much more. How much more serious? Treatment of these sorts of issues. There's an opera called Carrie Nation that she's always confused when when I give my 90% Descended from that woman hacked up bars with a hatchet and I say that's a beautiful example of an unusual. She did flashy things like chopping up Sloane's which is good material anecdotal stuff in the history books. It keeps the children's attention and and I would guess that that one name that would pop into almost every schoolchild head. If you said Temperance wood would be Carrie Nation and and chopping up saloons, even though that was rather unusual behavior for temperance. People are now but I do think still the Carrie Nations focus and emphasis was more on Carrie Nation that herself as opposed to a philosophy and an ideal it was on the temperature right now. There was a musical which I remember being involved in an 1944 as a sort of hanging around being presented something. Luma girl, which had a Charming scene where it where I'm where the where the women were jailed or arrested for voting but it was done in such a way that it didn't interfere with the with the fun of a play or perhaps Bloomer girl will be on the agenda. I one of these days locally, but for now we are going to have this weekend the mother of us all text by Gertrude Stein music by Virgil Thomson. Is this weekend's Opera by the Minnesota Opera Company. We hope you'll be there and listening be here. I should say where you know Shaughnessy Auditorium right now College of Saint Catherine in St. Paul. We run out of time. I want to thank our panelists today. Dr. Gretchen Crider. Dr. Susan B Anthony II reverdy Lane Marsh and Maestro Philip brunelle for being with us reminding you that this program was made possible in part with funds provided by the Minnesota Humanities commission to the Minnesota Opera Company and remind you that the mother of us all will be Broadcast live this Saturday night at 8 on these listener-supported stations. Thank you all and good day.