Program for “4 Saints In 3 Acts / An Opera to be Sung”, Words by Gertrude Stein, Music by Virgil Thomson. Empire Theatre, New York City, 1934. Original wrappers. 17pp., including illustrated advertisements. With an inserted slip noting that the orchestra would be conducted by Thomson himself. Plus, an illustrated leaflet for Aida, with “All-Negro Cast” at Syria Mosque [Pittsburgh, Pa.], Oct.30, 1941. 8½x11, 1 page. With a tear affecting the photo of La Julia Rhea.
Also includes a 2pg. (printed on 1 sheet) pictorial leaflet for De Paur’s Infantry Chorus, 1948-49, a post-war singing group of 35 Black World War II military veterans led by composer Leonard De Paur, who later produced a Black Opera Gala with performances of “Four Saints”; that Depression-era opera by composer Thomson, with legendary Gertrude Stein as librettist, was originally “ground breaking for form, content, and its all black-cast, with singers directed by…a prominent black choral director”. This 1934 performance included most of the original cast of the Broadway opening two months earlier, starring Edward Mathews, coach of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, and Beatrice Robinson-Wayne, a Virginian who had been a “soloist in church choirs”; eight years later, the Aida production launched the National Negro Opera Company, the first African-American opera company in the United States which remained active until 1962. This performance was a few weeks after the premiere. Rare ephemeral items, especially the very fragile Aida leaflet.