Fortunato: An Opera in Three Scenes (1958) ed. by Stephanie Jensen-Moulton, and: Fortunato: Orchestration of Scene 1 ed. by Stephanie Jensen-Moulton (review)

Stephanie Jensen-Moulton’s edition of Fortunato by Miriam Gideon (1906–1996), an opera in three scenes, is a highly significant volume to be published in A-R Editions’ series Recent Researches in American Music. Completed in 1958, Fortunato is the only opera that Gideon wrote and, as Jensen-Moulton points out, in over fifty years since it was completed, the opera has never received a full performance. In fact, Fortunato was written without a commission or a planned performance, which was an unusual compositional situation for Gideon. The music for Fortunato survives in two fair autograph sources: a piano-vocal score of the complete opera, and an orchestrated score of scene 1, both of which are part of the Miriam Gideon Papers in the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Copies scattered in other libraries are reproductions of these sources. Fortunately, the plates included in both volumes testify to the remarkable clarity and condition of the source material. Thanks to her work, Jensen-Moulton expertly brings to light an important opera which can now ultimately be heard in full and receive an audience. The publication of these scores marks a major contribution to scholarship on Gideon, and broadens the scope of operas written by American women composers in the mid-twentieth century.

Given that scholarship and recognition of the New York composer is still growing (and surprising considering Gideon’s impressive body of work), Jensen-Moulton’s introduction to the piano-vocal score edition is essential, and establishes crucial biographical material on Gideon as well as the historical and musical contexts for the opera. Detailed attention is given to Gideon’s life and music during the 1950s, to the Spanish farce of the same name that was the basis for the libretto, and Gideon’s musical style in Fortunato. In the supplement edition, Jensen-Moulton chiefly draws attention to Gideon’s instrumentation of scene 1, the scene’s earlier ending in this version, as well as discussing the possible reasons for the composer’s decision to orchestrate only part of her opera.

Jensen-Moulton begins her introduction to the piano-vocal score by illuminating possible gendered reasons for the scholarly neglect of Fortunato, including a wider discussion of the attitudes towards American women composers in mid-century. She then provides substantive details on the political, musical, and historical conditions under which Fortunato was written during the 1950s. One of the most significant historical experiences that Jensen-Moulton highlights was the political difficulties that Gideon and her husband, Frederic Ewen, faced during the McCarthy era. In the first half of the 1950s, both Gideon and Ewen ultimately lost their teaching jobs at Brooklyn College (where Ewen taught English and Gideon music) and at City College where Gideon also taught music, due to Ewen’s leftist views, which Gideon shared. Jensen-Moulton provides a first-hand interview excerpt (with Ewen’s grandson Alexander Ewen) where the composer tells in her own words the moment that her husband received a subpoena to appear before a committee connected with McCarthy. Although Gideon faced economic and professional hardship, Jensen-Moulton also illustrates how the decade of the 1950s was musically fruitful for her. Evidence from recordings, concert reviews, premieres of her work, and correspondence with the composer George Perle provide a full and rounded...