Bond's Opera Celebrates Suffrage Pioneer

The names most commonly associated with women’s suffrage are Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The History Channel’s website lists three other “Women Who Fought for the Vote”: Alice Paul, Lucy Stone, and Ida B. Wells. While that article doesn’t claim exclusivity for those five, it is curious that it doesn’t include Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for president of the United States — in 1872!

That would not surprise Victoria Bond, the East Hampton composer and conductor whose opera “Mrs. President” will be presented by the Rochester Lyric Opera on Saturday in celebration of the 100th anniversary of women gaining the right to vote in New York State.

“For somebody who I think is such a significant historic person, most people don’t know Victoria Woodhull,” said Ms. Bond. “She was such a radical, and was involved not only with the suffrage movement but also had her own newspaper and was the first woman to have a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. I mean, that’s pretty major stuff.”

Woodhull’s 88 years were full of successes, failures, and controversies. Born in Ohio in 1838 into a poor and abusive family, she became a follower of the spiritualist movement and claimed spirits guided her to New York City. There she met the financier Cornelius Vanderbilt, with whose assistance she and her sister Tennessee Claflin opened a brokerage firm on Wall Street in 1870.

They used their profits to found Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly, whose primary purpose was to support her bid for president, but which also advocated free love, sex education, woman suffrage, and other radical ideas at the time.

However, in 1872, a few days before the election, the paper published a story revealing that Henry Ward Beecher, the renowned preacher of Brooklyn’s Plymouth Church and a critic of Woodhull’s free love philosophy, was having an affair with one of his parishioners.

The same day Woodhull was arrested, along with her sister and her second husband, Colonel James Blood, for publishing an obscene newspaper. Stigmatized by the press, branded “Mrs. Satan” by Harper’s Weekly, she spent election night in jail.

“The person who brought this story to my attention was my mother,” said Ms. Bond. “She was traveling in San Francisco and saw a plaque that said, ‘Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for president, slept here.’ She suggested it would make a good opera.” While Ms. Bond was working on something else at the time, the idea took hold, and several biographies on Woodhull came out within the next few years.

The playwright Marcia Norman introduced Ms. Bond to Hilary Bell, a student of hers at the Juilliard School who was also interested in Woodhull. “We just hit it off immediately. I could not have wished for a better person to work with.” They discussed the story together from the beginning. Ms. Bond had a clear idea of which scenes from Woodhull’s life she wanted to musicalize, “but as far as where they came, that was something we experimented a great deal with.”

“The brilliant thing Hilary was able to do was to condense the action to basically one year, 1872. A playwright as well as a librettist, she was able to transform this very messy and complicated life into a very clear through line. That was what we always worked toward, finding that dramatic center.”

The first reading of the opera with an orchestra took place in 2001 with the New York City Opera, long before there was any thought of centennial celebrations. Subsequent performances happened at Guild Hall in 2008, when it was titled “Mrs. Satan,” and in 2012 at the Anchorage Opera in Alaska. Several scenes were performed at Opera America in New York City last November.

The Lyric Opera had planned a performance of another opera by Ms. Bond, “Clara,” the story of Clara Schumann, the musician and composer who was married to Robert Schumann. “They were working with the Susan B. Anthony Society on the centennial celebration and suggested we do ‘Mrs. President’ instead.”

Ms. Bond stressed the importance to any operatic story of a character with charismatic appeal, even if that character is flawed or dark, “like Boris Godunov or Don Giovanni. Both Woodhull and Beecher had almost predatory characters,” she said. “Both were radicals and visionaries, but he had a fatal flaw, sleeping with his female parishioners, and she was not above exposing him if he didn’t support her presidential campaign. If the character is all goodness and always does the right thing, there’s not much of a story there.”

Ms. Bond noted the similarities of the story to today’s news. “Beecher definitely used his position to take advantage of women.” She made one change during the performance last November at Opera America in the scene where Woodhull announces her candidacy for the presidency at Steinway Hall. “In that scene, the crowd heckles her, calling her ‘Mrs. Satan.’ So I added the words, ‘Lock her up!’ And in fact they did.”

The story has a strong East Hampton connection. Lyman Beecher, Henry Ward Beecher’s father, was the preacher of the Presbyterian Church on Main Street from 1798 until 1810. “He was a real hellfire and brimstone preacher, very charismatic,” said Ms. Bond. He relocated in 1810 to Litchfield, Conn., where Henry Ward Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe were born. His two oldest children, the theologian Edward Beecher, and Catharine Beecher, an educator, were born in East Hampton.

“Mrs. President” is still awaiting a fully staged performance; the Rochester production will be semi-staged. Ms. Bond recalled a remarkable moment during the final scene of the Anchorage Opera performance. “Many prominent women politicians live in Anchorage. In the final scene, when Victoria is alone in this jail cell singing, ‘Arise, arise, from my ashes arise,’ the women came out of the wings onstage and walked through the audience. Here it was, 1872 talking to 2012, and her vision had become a reality. The audience went wild.”

Saturday’s performance will take place at 7 p.m. at Rochester’s Lyric Theatre. Tickets, available from the theater’s website, are $25, $50 for preferred seating and a reception.