5 Facts About Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein's Second Opera
- The Mother of Us All was Virgil Thomson’s second opera with Gertrude Stein, following Four Saints in Three Acts from 1928.
- Stein died in 1946, the year before the opera premiered, so she never saw it performed.
- The opera is a portrait of Susan B. Anthony and the women’s suffrage movement.
- Thomson wrote the libretto himself after Stein’s death, using her existing text.
- The premiere took place at Columbia University in New York City on May 7, 1947.