Dr. Atomic
The article was helpful. I read it because I was trying to find out how long the opera lasted. "3 hours of dread" was the best I could come up with after 1/2 hour of googling.
John Phillips
read Karren Alenier's article
The article was helpful. I read it because I was trying to find out how long the opera lasted. "3 hours of dread" was the best I could come up with after 1/2 hour of googling.
John Phillips
read Karren Alenier's article
Thank you for this clean and compact capsule of the life of Beverly Sills. She brought love and humanity to a sometimes stilted art form. All you have to do is add her music to this article and you have an important profile of this champion and giant in American opera.
Alvin Roettner
read Karren Alenier's article
Nice review--makes one want to rush out and see it. Does anyone know how one can see this spectacle without making the pilgrimage to Vegasland and pay the exhorbitant ticket prices?
Will
read Karren Alenier's article
Fantastic review of Cirque Du Soleil's "O". I recently forked out the dough earlier this year to see this show and while it was well worth the price, your article captured the experience for those folks who either can't or won't make it to Vegas for this show.
Lia Beachy
read Karren Alenier's article
Karren Alenier takes us to another time, another era, another life, another appetite we did not know before. And let us have more.
Grace Cavalieri
read Karren Alenier's article
I will be rereading this all week.SO rich, so much tapestry.One cannot get all it nourishes in one sitting. This is a fireside companion, this article.
Grace Cavalieri
read Karren Alenier's article
I think that it is generous to give the examples of the writing in progress rather than an abstract set of illusions. This is very satisfying it its detail.
Grace Cavalieri
read Karren Alenier's article
Very interesting on names. I am thinking about Stein called mother of DADA by the playwright (critiqued in this piece) and that this could be true in practice if not theory. She came in at the same time DADA was introduced in the US Armory Show 1913, and we associate Stein with such dismantling and remounting of ideas...so interesting subject.
Grace
Intelligent article. I gather that the reviewer preferred Sellars' opera to Woolcock's version although points were made in favor of each.
Grace
Encompass Opera Company is a pioneer discovering new lands and so is Karren Alenier.
Grace Cavalieri
Theater people of all genres, and for that matter all artists including endeavors involving poetry and the other written arts, must not be defeated by a government organization saying we cannot give you any money. Artists need to think outside of that sow's purse and actively seek money else where. If necessary, take off your hat (mine says "Poet" in big bold letters) and pass it around to those listening. If you cannot get past the embarrassment of begging, you are not a true artist. While we are on the subject, come see Four Saints in Three Acts Feb 20 at CUNY Graduate Center on 5th Avenue. It's free to the public. Look it up at EncompassOpera.org. Encompass doesn't yet have all the money needed for the 16 piece orchestra but if you come and toss something in the hat after you hear this wonderful performance of the most innovative American opera ever created, maybe Nancy Rhodes won't have to go to the Poor House.
Karren Alenier
How Marvelous! Had no knowledge of this work, and it is an enthralling discovery.
Grace Cavalieri
I too fell in love with Peter Grimes a long time basically because I've always worshipped Britten's music and this opera is so incandescent. Thanks for a beautiful look at a beautiful production.
Amy Sachs
I'm frankly not a Wagner fan except for Tristan, which an early beau played and played for me when I was 15. However, because I have a Polish-Canadian friend in Toronto who is a Wagner nut and edits a Wagner mag, I stolidly began to read-- liked what Karren said very much and read the whole thing! I will also forward him the site.
Elisavietta Ritchie
You sure live in a strange and wonderful world. I still have an image of Gertrude Stein in front of my eyes from a long long time ago. I was a silent feminist before the word officially entered the lexicon. Your essay is excellent! Your conclusion is kind of scary.
Ilo-Mai Harding
I much appreciate the way this well-researched and beautifully written article puts the disquieting spirit of Weininger and his possible influence on Gertrude Stein to rest. Being Jewish, a woman, and gay was a triple whammy of a handicap on someone who wanted to compete in the male-dominated arena of literature. Stein found a number of strategies to hide those unwanted identities and prevail. Being a "genius" was one; being an exile, an American in Paris was another; a third brilliant move was writing without disclosing her identity -- writing as "one" "anyone" "everyone" "someone" or "everybody". It took a genius to write her autobiography and call it "Everybody's Autobiography".
Renate Stendhal
Thank you for your personal and informative portrait of the magnificent Beijing Opera. I have been there and seen it (and experienced it) a few times. It is grand opera at its grandest and great theatrical art and great entertainment. Your sense and perception added to my memories and enjoyment.
Anee S. Waterson
This is a magnifcent overview. I cannot imagine anyone attending this opera without such an understanding as Karren gives us here.
Grace Cavalieri
As someone, as a child, who loved reading Pearl Buck, the resonance of history shining in this article makes me glad to live long enough to see the distance covered.
Grace Cavalieri
Thank you so much for this look at new opera. Isn't wonderful how far-ranging opera is going. The Steiny Road to Operadom is now a super-highway. Thanks Karren Alenier for taking us with you on the journey.
Nuntaporn Amadsri
From a comment posted to Karren Alenier's blog at Scene4...
I've been rereading a number of The Dresser's postings and I'm ashamed I haven't written before not only to thank you but to say how marvelous it is what you've been doing over this time. I have no reason to flatter -- you've brought such a fine critical intelligence and in a writing style that keeps one (me) moving from one sentence to another. Ann and I haven't gone to all that much in D.C. this year, so The Dressing has been a vicarious way of doing that. A bit of hyperbole maybe but not all that much. We did get to the Joe Louis opera -- I've seen numbers of Leon Major's productions, all of which have been strikingly distinctive. The voicies espeically of Carmon Balthrop and Adrienne Webster, as you say, were compelling -- Webster had terrific dramatic presence. I loved the staging -- the modern Greek chorus, the movement with chairs, the masks, the lighting, Kirby Malone and his partner's projections. The structure of the storytelling might have been more adventurous -- I felt my attention flag at times, which could easily have been me and not the libretto. I only read the Washington Post review later on, not wanting to be prejudiced, and the criticism had some validity, though in truth I was caught up in the production. I'm not a great fan of so-called biopics and so when I say it might have been more adventurous, something different than the linear storytelling. Then your observations about the Terra Cotta warriors, the differences between seeing them in Xian and at the National Geographic -- first rate. When I first read your post on Split This Rock, your comment about Holly Bass didn't register with me -- I didn't know her work and so it passed over. But on Friday night, a bunch of us were at the Enoch Pratt for a reading for Kim's Full Moon -- Holly read and did her "In This District," which I loved.
Merrill Leffler
Well, It sounds as if this deserves a Pulitzer...I didn't know there was a Pulitzer category for opera. Apparently the dissonance was not too off-putting for this is a rave review.
Grace Cavalieri
What a fine coverage of a play no one seemed to report accurately enough for my taste before.
Grace Cavalieri
Thanks for the excellent research. Bowles was a beautiful writer but I do love his music. Your article is very well researched.
Shela Xoregos
Lovely, lovely, lovely. I am sorry I missed the theater broadcast. But it's almost like being there, reading your review. I wonder if the opening night audience left their politics home. And your comment- "a fishing trip, an opportunity to see what will be pulled out of the water or thin air?" They sure pulled a big and important one out of thin air,didn't they.
Melanie Mansmin
As an admirer of Gertrude Stein I feel I have to come to her aid by pointing out a few misunderstandings in my estimated colleague's interesting article. There is no indication anywhere that Stein didn't finish her murder mystery. The story ends very nicely, in fact, with a little "Thank you"-bow, an ironic finishing arabesque, and the word "Finis.", True, in his afterword to the 1982 reedition of the book, John Herbert Gill states, "'Blood on the Dining-Room Floor' comes to an end, but, as Gertrude Stein herself said of it, is has no ending." What that means, however, is, no ending in the traditional sense of what is expected in a murder mystery: the mystery solved, the murderer found. None of this, of course, in Stein's detective novel. The mystery of "Blood on the Dining-Room Floor" is that of Stein's identity. Who was she, now that she was suddenly famous? "I am I because my little dog knows me." And here we come to another misunderstanding. I believe nobody and nothing ever "forced" Gertrude Stein into writing anything. She was not the kind. What she wanted at all cost was being famous, a "lion." If there were suggestions, from a publisher, for example, they were only stating the obvious: a compulsive author nearing age 60 would necessarily think of autobiographical writing. Doing it in the voice of her lover, as the pretend "Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas," is such a sly, playful move - even Stein couldn't have been that brilliant under any kind of pressure!
Renate Stendhal
Gertrude Stein would love that 65 years after her death, she can still stir people about her accomplishments. I respect what Renate Stendhal has to say about Stein's Blood on the Dining Room Floor and The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Lots of scholars argue over what Stein meant and did. Diana Souhami in Gertrude and Alice, her biography of the famous pair wrote this: "Gertrude tried, but failed, to write about the strange events of the summer in a book called Blood on the Dining Room Floor. 'It was very bothersome. I thought I would try but to try is to die and so I did not really try. I was not doing any writing.'" Stein based Blood on the Dining Room Floor on some events local to her summer home in Bilignin. There was a dead woman but what happened was unclear as is whether Stein left Blood on the Dining Room Floor a cliffhanger or a neatly tied up literary package.
As for The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, there is no doubt that the writing of this work caused Stein incredible stress. Some people argue (not convincingly to my way of thinking however) that Alice Toklas wrote the work.
Karren Alenier
I am in love with Glück's AVERNO. What a treat to hear about its transformation.
Grace Cavalieri
Three cheers for the math-music connection.
I look forward to more news of HOW MANY MIDNIGHTS!
JoAnne Growney
Hey Kathi, I'll take the wisdom of Eeyore like "We can look for the North Pole, or we can play 'Here we go gathering Nuts in May'" over that of Michele Bachman who said, "We are running out of rich people in this country." She doesn't know her geography, history, science, sociology, demographics, and so how could anyone expect her to understand why gayness can't be prayed away. Pity that poor politician who thinks America is running out of millionaires. I'm lighting a candle for your birthday cake, close your eyes, and make a wish. Then let's go to the North Pole. We have too many nuts in May already!
Karren Alenier
I love the trouble David Alpaugh is stirring up for the future of American poetry and how he frames this discussion with opera. I was pretty disturbed this past week when I started reading my copy of Poet & Writers magazine which is focused on MFA programs. And, yes, this is not a new subject about how too many people are being churned through these programs with degrees that for the most part are meaningless. Just for the record, the Steiny Road Poet does not have an MFA and has never seriously considered getting one. Supposedly these degrees are for people who want to teach or scale that rickety ladder of publishing success. This poet has done and led her share of poetry workshops on the inside and outside of universities to know they can be done anywhere and some have good value but at the end of a university program, what does the degree get -- a certified poet? What does this mean? However, what bothers me about Mr. Alpaugh's fine essay is what is missing. He has the older end of the poets' world covered but not the younger side which includes the controversial language poets led by such older poets as John Ashberry. Like the work of Gertrude Stein, too many people discount the work of language poets. Sure, there is a lot of so-called language poetry that is uninteresting, and this poet thinks that the MFA programs contribute to that, but just like any art form, the more you immerse yourself, the better you can judge the new stuff. So bring on the poetry theater -- there is no end of the world coming for poetry as long as we keep those sharp pencils moving.
Karren Alenier
As a poet attuned to the musical line, I want to say before the November issue of Scene4 hides the incredibly well thought out essay What Poets Can Learn from Songwriters by David Alpaugh that there are new ways to hear some of the poetic songwriters whose lyrics are surprising and get into your head when you least expect them to. For example, the Pandora app that brings tailored radio according to your favorite singer. I personally have tapped into Madeleine Peyroux radio which delivers to my ear Nellie McKay and other new songwriters as well as those from the past like Billie Holiday.
If you don't know the lyrics of Peyroux & McKay, see my review at
The Dressing titled Don't Pick Fights with Poets
Karren Alenier
No matter what convoluted political and cultural leanings and swayings, this is important information which is crucial to know. All sides. All angles.
Grace Cavalieri
Karren Alenier's article on the Washington Post's obscene review of Gertrude Stein and the exhibition Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories at the National Portrait Gallery in D.C. brilliantly analyzes one particular case of openly declared "hatred" for Stein. This sort of hatred has followed Stein from the moment she began to publish, in the early twentieth century, but it is worth noting the context that gave rise to this "indecent exposure" in a serious newspaper like the Washington Post. Stein's present renaissance with two epochal traveling exhibitions has brought out people like critic Phil Kennicott who, as Alenier reminds us, assigns himself, a "seat in the corner with the Stein haters that include 'the worst sort of critics--anti-Semites, misogynists, homophobes and philistines.'" It is worth noticing that Stein's old enemies found new fodder and an academic seal of approval for their attacks in Barbara Will's book, Unlikely Collaboration: Gertrude Stein, Bernard Faÿ and the Vichy Dilemma (2011). The inflammatory book fed into the Stein controversy that was triggered by the exhibition Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, linked to the question how Stein and Toklas had managed to survive in Nazi-occupied France. Will's speculations about the "true Stein" and her alleged "collaboration" with a fascist friend and fascist regime unleashed a cultural hysteria, a sort of license to kill that took over the media and blogosphere. I have no doubt that this cultural atmosphere provided the justification for the Washington Post to publish the infamous article. Will camouflages the fact that her book is in fact about Bernard Faÿ, an intellectual friend of Steins's from the twenties, a once respected historian and author who during the war became a Gestapo informer and persecutor of the Freemasons in France. Hardly anybody today would care about Bernard Faÿ and his twisted fate as a condemned collaborator who was ultimately pardoned by French President Mitterand. Gertrude Stein is being used to create a story that pretends to be sensationalist news when the facts and allegations have already been published and rehashed numerous times, most recently by Janet Malcolm in Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice (2007).
With all due respect to Renate Stendhal, who I cherish as a person Steinian, I find the work that Barbara Will published in Unlikely Collaboration: Gertrude Stein, Bernard Faÿ, and the Vichy Dilemma refreshing for its non sensationalization of a tough Stein scenario.
I am on the record and urge you to read what I said in my recent Scene4 article An Invitation to Gertrude Stein's Tea Party.
As noted Stein scholar Catharine Stimpson said recently at a conference held partially at the National Portrait Gallery where the exhibition "Seeing Gertrude Stein" just closed, "Gertrude Stein was stupid about politics."
I consider Gertrude Stein, Renate Stendhal, and Barbara Will part of my Steinian family. I won't stop loving any of them.
Karren Alenier
Karren Alenier is a much cherished part of the Steinista tribe, indeed, and we agree quite happily to disagree. We all have a blind eye somewhere and Stein herself was the first to admit her political stupidity and inexperience: "Writers are not really interested in politics..." etc. To be on the record, this was the point of my detailed article in the Los Angles Review of Books, Was Gertrude Stein A Collaborator? (In a shorter version - Exclusive: Was Gertrude Stein A Hitler Fan?
An academic like Catharine R. Stimpson has begun to see Will's book with different eyes, as I was privileged to hear from herself. Others, like the great Stein expert Marjorie Perloff, have never been taken in. If you want a non-sensationalist account of Stein's war years, I refer you to the book by Dominique Saint Pierre, "Gertrude Stein, le Bugey, la guerre" -- an impeccable study by an historian, devoid of the inflated speculations in Barbara Will's book.
Renate Stendhal
What a noisy and exciting eight-ring circus your time in Chicago must have been! Delightful write-up.
Elisavietta Ritchie
This page contains an archive of all entries posted to Scene4 Magazine | letters to the editor in the Alenier category. They are listed from oldest to newest.
Alpaugh is the next category.
Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.