Virgil Thomson: The Mother of Us All

OPERA
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2020 (continuing through FEBRUARY 14)
7:00 PM

New York Philharmonic
Charles Engelhard Court, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan

$115-$145
https://www.metmuseum.org/events/programs/met-live-arts/FY20-the-mother-of-us-all

This is, I think, my favorite American opera — even more so than the same team's Four Saints in Three Acts.  The skewed Americana music of Virgil Thomson (my personal hero as a music critic, as I'm sure you don't care to know) perfectly backs Gertrude Stein's astonishingly witty libretto — and what's more, the subject matter of Susan B. Anthony and the women's suffrage movement brings some wonted coherence to the proceedings (don't worry, though:  Stein and Thomson couldn't be pious if they wanted to).  This is a fully-staged production (with video by Kit Fitzgerald, to give a taste of the quality of the participants), with singers from Juilliard and musicians from our own New York Philharmonic (an institution Thomson famously dissed).  Oh, and it's to be performed in a perfect setting:  the federal-style confines of the Charles Engelhard Court.  It's sold out — who wouldn't want to go? — but look for cancellations and last-minute availability.

MAKE A NIGHT OF IT:  Little Frog is a perfectly nice bistro, for which we can be grateful.