Although Gertrude Stein, as much as James Joyce, is often considered the most famous and influential of modern experimental writers of prose and poetry, few realize the breadth and depth of her contribution to theater and opera, which hardly stops with the justly famous collaboration with Virgil Thomson, "Four Saints in Three Acts." She considered Operas and Plays to be her definitive statement, as of 1932, for the stage.

Born in 1874 in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, raised in Oakland, California, she lived in France from 1903 till her death in 1946.