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|  | | Gertrude Stein Invents a Jump Early On
The libretto of Gertrude Stein Invents a Jump Early On depicts the legendary modernist writer Gertrude Stein facing her critics: her brother Leo, her gawking public, and the Nazis in World War II.
"The year is 1908; the scene is Pablo Picasso’s apartment in Paris, at a party in honor of the elderly primitive painter Henri Rousseau. In one corner of the festive crowd, art critic Leo Stein is having an argument with his poet sister Gertrude about 'her nonsense. . . how she embarrasses me.'
"Is Gertrude Stein crazy? Some people think so and Leo can’t help wondering:. 'My sister is intelligent,' he says, 'but she makes a fool of herself and me.'
"The opera, by librettist Karren L. Alenier and composer William Banfield, is reaching out to an audience early on. Some 200 peop | |  | | Looking for Divine Transportation
The search for those angels who are wheels transports the reader through a landscape of eccentric family members, the world of Gertrude Stein and Paul Bowles, and Alenier's own brand of Eden.
"'The story simmers like stew,' Karren Alenier writes in her poem 'Ram Caught in Thicket.' And these poems too are a rich, simmering stew made up of family, far places, and literary legends. Looking for Divine Transportation is a book vibrant with Life."
Linda Pastan, author of Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems 1968-1998.
"Karren Alenier's poems are ruminations on the bonds of familial and universal kinship, to which she is heir and witness. As in her marvelous poem, 'Ana Marraksia: I am from Marrakech,' she pulls us up into the 'worldtree' of identities, rich in the wordfe | |  | | The Steiny Road to Operadom: The Making of American Operas
The Steiny Road to Operadom, written in a style anyone can read, is a collection of essays, interviews, reviews, and a contemporary libretto with a time line of events that preceded the birth of a new opera about Gertrude Stein. This entertaining book provides a roadmap for creative collaborators and performing arts educators. It is a history of American opera framed by the collaboration of Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson. With comments from opera luminaries such as Plácido Domingo and Mark Adamo, this unusual reference with a comic flair uniquely answers how to begin, sustain, and complete an opera project. It includes a bibliography and index.
The Steiny Road to Operadom: The Making of American Operas is an upcoming collection of essays, interviews, reviews, and a working libretto that explores the intersection between poetry and music that proceeds to contemporary opera — the most complex genre of the performing arts. The collaboration of Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson as well as the more contemporary collaboration between poet Karren LaLonde Alenier and composer William Banfield are the context for this study in process.
This book is written in a style that anyone can read, and explains how a current day artist can beg |
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