Veritable Michael - a podcast opera
Veritable Michael - a podcast opera
Ep. 6 Veritable Michael — the opera
Welcome to the last episode of Veritable Michael — a podcast opera. This Episode is an audio version of the complete opera. If you are joining us here and would like to learn more about the research and making of this opera, go back and listen to our earlier episodes. If you've been with us from the start, it's time for you to meet the man himself, Michael Field.
Veritable Michael is a Shadow Opera production.
Music composed by Tom Floyd.
Words by Michael Field.
Created and produced by Sophie Goldrick and Tom Floyd.
Artwork by James Long.
Performances by Lizzie Holmes, Sophie Goldrick, James Long and Patrick Neyman.
Veritable Michael — a podcast opera
This podcast captures the making of Veritable Michael, a new opera based on the true story of Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper — two Victorian poets who lived, loved and wrote under the pseudonym, Michael Field. This podcast combines Katherine's and Edith's journals, poetry and letters with an original score by Tom Floyd, and interviews with guest speakers. Join the Shadow Opera team as we dive into Michael's fascinating and queer world.
If you are enjoying Veritable Michael and want to support our show, please consider making a donation.
A full transcript of this episode can be found here.
Veritable Michael is generously supported by the Ralph Vaughan Williams Trust, The Stephen Oliver Award and The Countess of Munster Musical Trust and our incredible band of crowd-funders.
For more information, video content or just to tell us that you're loving the podcast - go to shadowopera.com/veritable-michael or via our Instagram.
Hello friends! Welcome to the final episode of Veritable Michael. Where have we been? Well, there's been some work to do and we are proud to bring to your ears today. Veritable Michael - the opera. I'll be signing off as your guide and handing over to the capable voice of Michael Field himself. What follows here is an audio version of the live show, which will premiere on August 14 at the historic Brunel Museum. You can book tickets right now, and you should link is in the episode description. It's going to be a night to remember. We want to thank all of our amazing academic contributors and the brilliant performers are Lizzie Holmes and Patrick Neyman. Tom and I have been holding this project close for about two years. We are so excited to take it to the next stage. We appreciated all your feedback and support so much. Please share us now with your friends and be sure to get a ticket to the show if you can live music loves live audiences and we would love to see you there now without further ado... Veritable Michael
Michael Field:This is my story. And yet it's not these are my words, and yet they aren't. The story is based on true events. And yet it's not. The words I'm speaking aren't my words. Someone put them in my mouth... A chorus of women in robes enter stage left
Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper:The moon rose full: the women stood. As though within a sacred wood. Around an altar—thus with awe the perfect, virgin orb they saw supreme above them ; and its light Fell on their limbs and garments white. Then with pale, lifted brows they stirred their fearful steps at Sappho's word,
Michael Field:Michael Field - a new voice which is likely to be heard far and wide among the English speaking peoples. They're talking about me you know, not bad, not bad at all. Time. The arrow of time darts forward and back clicking into place in 1893 We opened in a small dark Theatre in London just off the Strand. Actors are stumbling through lines of scripts in hand whilst the director them generally pained. Two women installed in a box by the stage watch on with anxious excitement. Katherine and Edith, a new play about to open set in Hungary, something about memory. I'm going this way now.
Actor:Yes, you think this is a very grand moment that you will be a hero a martyr. I can see it in your eyes. You're a poet or some type of bladder brain and you were trembling with joy to be in peril and to be of importance. The dream of your life will be fulfilled if I am the fool you take me for. You wish me to threaten the muskets do you?
Katherine Bradley:There is no place on earth where I am externally so happy as in a theatre, and there is no excitement possible to me like the excitement of the unlidding of the stage’s eye. This afternoon I dare not go to the theatre— I have such a chill. It is difficult to stay away, I so love rehearsal. It is wonderful to see one’s words, growing pictures, movements, persons. [spoken] I must go back to Wednesday’s Dress Rehearsal - all went smoothly, except that the battery the director insisted on using refused to work at the right moment, and Ferencz’s speech antedated the muskets. Also the curtain came down too slowly in Act III. Mrs Morris (very charming) said she would have given her eyes to write such a play and declared Act IV simply inevitable. De Lange, the director, was a trial- his temper and his tongue and brow. After the show was over he actually said across the stalls
Mr DeLange:“It went very well indeed, considering one of the actors did all he was told not to do and nothing he was told to do”
Edith Cooper:I saw what he was aiming and he does not think Bond will be a success and publicly and ungenerously wishes to clear himself of the responsibility. The insult stuck, but to Bond was very quiet in his anger. I said "I understand what you suffer. I am a poet" and we cordially shook hands, he will yet to do well. Five o'clock the gas lamps are lighted the sun is setting.
Michael Field:And now… a montage. Time flows backwards, further and further, finally settling in the cheerless surrounds of 1860s Birmingham. 22 year old Katherine, daughter of a tobacco manufacturer, escapes to study in Paris at the College de France. Here she absorbs the beauty and tragedy of the city, cementing her passion for the sensual and sentimental. Homesickness strikes and time dials forward, returning Katherine to her invalid sister’s side. She takes on the care of her two nieces, Amy and Edith. Edith the eldest, is her favourite, already a prolific poet in her early teens. Katherine, 15 years Edith’s senior, travels Europe and begins publishing poetry under the name Aran Lee. Edith, sickly and zealously protected, remains at home under the careful watch of her parents. Sparked by a shared poetic passion, Katherine and Edith exchange letter after letter and coin nickname after nickname, their intimacy and devotion grow into something more.
Katherine Bradley:I woke, I longed for you- with the longing of the mother for the babe that milks it, then of course I dreamed of you. In less than a month, Heaven smiling, we shall be on the Moors together… Oh how I love thee, how I dote on thee!! Thy Queen Titania.
Edith Cooper:My darling wife, Sweet wife, My wife, My own darling love, My most beloved, My precious one My Merle, I quiver…I want my Merle! Fowl and fowlet, Owl and owlet, My all wise fowl My darling Simorg, My darling Sim, Oh Sim, My stock-dove, Oh Sim,
Katherine Bradley:Dearest love, My own husband My child, Darling of my heart, Dearest and best, My darling joy My darling, my darling My pretty, Oh, Persian puss, Ever pretty Persian My dear Persian, Oh, Persian puss Oh puss My precious puss Hush Persian puss I do not think I shall ever love Florence - the streets are much like Paris only not so picturesque, the Arno is a dark brown, not nearly so nice as the Seine, and the outside of the churches are an acquired taste, like olives.
Edith Cooper:How your letter has enriched me- given me sight of heaps of sun-dried melons and gourds, and sun-bronzed women. Your letter made me very happy.
Katherine Bradley:September 1883 My own love, I begin where I left off at the Mayor’s reception Monday night. As soon as we got into the crowded room and had bowed to host and hostess, little glasses of foaming champagne were handed round, then little patties - wicked looking little things. Fear not, I touched none of their evil things. I remained very miserable.
Edith Cooper:My own loving Deare, The Parents won’t lend you the Pussy, and perhaps it is well that we should join when airs are milder…
Katherine Bradley:Mother must have a heart of stone if after this she keeps you from me. What is it to me to be in the woods without my Pretty swinging on the bough? Cooo Cooo says the old Fowl - till his throat vibrates. Coooo Coooo
Edith Cooper:Very sweet is your call to me. I love it dearly and it does not coo in vain for me. I will... Mewwwwww mewwww Addio, my own old fowl Thine own pussy Thine own poet and pussie Your loving and pure, pussie May we soon be fully re-united!
Katherine Bradley:Cooooo coooooo Farewell my pretty. Thine own forever, Sim. Your own Isla Ever thy own fond fowl Heaven reunite us Your own Michael. Katie Kiss me yet
again:and good night, my child Good night! Ever thy own fond fowl Hennie! My All-one Oh my large loving boy - good night! Michael Cooooo cooooooo...
Edith Cooper:Your Henry Heinrich Love from the Persian’s very heart He loves his all wise fowl Thy Master Hennie! The P.P. - who loves you and mews for you - mews for you and loves you. Mewwwwwww mewww…
Michael Field:Time snaps back… forward…? to my time, to my beginnings. Beginnings… How to begin? [practical] What is the right medium for my genius? Poetry? It’s not quite… alive enough. Playwright perhaps? Yes, those words would be living… breathing But my visions are grander than a stage can hold I need something in between…ah, the verse drama. An epic poem, no time constraints, casts of thousands if I so choose Stories unshackled from time and place. Ideal. Where first? The court of the Sicilian Emperor in the 11th Century? The Scottish highlands in the middle ages? All in good time… First, it must be Ancient Greece. Where we meet our heroine, Callirhoe. She is a servant of Dionysus, she’s been saved from death by Coresus, someone whose love she previously spurned. This brave act has made her question everything she thought she knew about duty, the pillar upon which she had built her entire life. Scene 8, A Wood. Enter Callirhoe.
Callirhoe:Alone lost. Deep in the shady hills, the dark heights I have yearned for. Far below a pyre is burning. Leap ye glowing flames, leap up to me. Coresus it avails nothing to heap thee with my proffered love. Do we lay food and wine about the dead, when the stiff lips are barred to make amends for past refusal to the trembling mouth? That I'd done evil deeds I might atone. The gods are gracious and make clean from guilt. But simply to have lived my summer through and borne no roses. Nothing compensates for dearth, for failure when seasons past. Ah me, ah me! And he besought my love as wildly, passionately as the dead beseech their burial. My heart aches with tears.
Michael Field:It’s pretty good really. My first published book and… with it comes adulation and admiration and… well don’t just take my word for it.
The Critics:A new voice which is likely to be heard far and wide among the English speaking. We cannot read 20 lines anywhere without finding traces the strong genius and a great dramatic imagination. It can be described as a work not only of remarkable promise, but notable performance as well It's not merely that in Michael Field we have a very considerable poet, but a very considerable poet who displays that special kind of freedom and rigour. Now careless, now luxuriant, now startling us with a flash of lightning... Mr Field to know that in reading scores of attempts at it by novices in recent years we have hardly ever come across one more successful than his own. He may take that reassurance.
Michael Field:Honestly, I never tire of listening to that! To say I made a splash was putting it mildly. I was suddenly the toast of the town![practical] Time picks up the pace, rolling on, frantically faster. Critics and literary types begin the hunt for Michael Field. Enter Robert Browning, among the dominant poetic voices of the age. He draws on his considerable connections to trace an address for the mysterious Michael Field. Robert writes a letter. Michael receives it. [Pause] Edith replies.
Edith Cooper:Dear Mr. Browning, I cannot thank you for the words you have written. Such words as yours give more
abundant life:to expend it in higher, more reverent effort is the only true gratitude possible. As to myself and my part in the book — to make all clear to you I must ask for complete secrecy. My aunt and I work together. She is my senior by 15 years. She has taught me, encouraged me and joined me to her poetic life. This happy union of two is sheltered by “Michael Field”. Please regard him as the author. Still hoping, doubting, that I can make you feel what your letter has been to me, I remain dear Mr. Browning, yours with deep respect, Edith Cooper
Robert Browning:Dear Miss Cooper, I was deceived by the“Michael Field” on the title page, and only read the plays last evening. It is long since I have been so thoroughly impressed by indubitable poetic genius, a word I consider while I write, only to repeat it, “genius”. Accept my true congratulations and believe me. Yours sincerely, Robert Browning
Katherine Bradley:Dear Mr. Browning, Spinoza, with his fine grasp of unity, says“If two individuals of exactly the same nature are joined together, they make up a single individual, doubly stronger than each alone” Edith and I make Veritable Michael. We humbly fear you are
destroying this truth:it is said the newspapers were taught by you to use the feminine pronoun! I write to you to beg you to set the critics on a wrong track. We have many things to say the world will not tolerate from a woman’s lips. We must be free to work out in the open air: we cannot be stifled in drawing-rooms. You are robbing us of real criticism — such as man gives man. In respectful entreaty, I am faithfully yours, Katharine Bradley.
Michael Field:Revelation. Our revelation. The beginning of an ending, The ending of a beginning, Genesis. Revelation. Mother, daughter and holy ghost A beloved, inseparable trinity Michael — Katherine, Field—Edith, and me.[impish] but the word has spread. Critics, once fooled, pay us back... Masculine pronouns are dropped. Our crimes? Not only our sex but our number. Genius belongs to the solitary man, We, outrageously, are two women! And now those same critics have the truth at last, Is it the end? Hardly![practical] Once again Time prances on, coming to a graceful halt in 1891. Michael Field has published another collection of poetry and seven more verse dramas. The scene opens in the decadent surroundings of Mrs Chandler Moulton’s drawing room, where we are attending one of the host’s ‘At Homes,’ exclusive, fabulous parties frequented by literary types such as Thomas Hardy, George Moore and another charming fellow you might know…
Sophie Goldrick:July 21 1890. Edith continued the conversation for I, from afar, recognised Oscar Wilde and desired to make his better acquaintance. He has a brown skin and coarse texture, incentive surface and no volcanic blood fructifying it from within. Powerful features, a firm jaw and fine head with hair that one feels was more beautiful some years ago. It is pathetic when bright hair simply glows dull instead of turning grey. The whole face wears an aspect of stubborn sense, but the dominant trait of that face is humour. His large presence beams with a mirth of a Greek god that has descended on a fat man of literary habits.
Oscar Wilde:There is only one man in this century who can write prose.
Katherine Bradley:You mean Mr. Peter?
Oscar Wilde:Yes! Take Marius the Epicurean, any page! French is wonderfully rich in colour words.
Katherine Bradley:We agreed English was poor in such. I instanced bluish-grey as a miserable effort. And he dwelt on the full pleasantness and charm of the French colour words ending in-artre, bleuartre, etc. We agreed the whole problem of life turns on pleasure.
Oscar Wilde:One is not always happy when one is good, but one is always good when one is happy.
Katherine Bradley:He has a theory.
Oscar Wilde:It's often genius that spoils the work of art. The Brontes, Jane Austen, George Sand, I class them all under the head of 'genius'. Genius killed the Brontes.
Katherine Bradley:There is one sentence of Mr. Pater’s I would not say I could never forgive, for I recognise its justice, but from which I suffer and which is hard to bear, that in which he speaks of'scholarly conscience' as male. I do not remember where the passage occurs...
Oscar Wilde:It is Appreciations, in the essay on Style. Page seven, left hand side, at the bottom.
Katherine Bradley:And in all this memory the one error was that it is page eight
Michael Field:Another evening at Mrs Chandler-Moulton’s sees Michael meeting the very charming, very handsome and altogether caddish art critic, Bernhard Berenson. Katherine is taken with Bernhard, but for Edith, something more powerful and…dangerous begins to spark. Time trickles on into the year 1893, where it makes itself comfortable. We are now in Paris, where Katherine and Edith have travelled to benefit from Bernhard’s artistic and worldly experience. They are devoted to one another in an unbreakable bond. Huh, Unbreakable perhaps, but unshakable? Let’s see. We open in a cramped, bare apartment as Katherine and Edith cast a disapproving eye over their new abode. Despite their unprepossessing accommodation, Edith’s mind whirls with the excitement of experiencing this most romantic of cities with her new paramour.
Edith Cooper:June 26 1892 Paris We go into our bedroom which leads from the salon — it looks impossible at first sight — so small a bed. We have a sense we are beginning a life in which the impossible becomes possible. As I pass through the door Bernhard says
Bernhard Berenson:how charming you are looking
Edith Cooper:and I feel an angry self-depreciation at the remark. After a walk with Bernhard, we light our own lamp in the dark salon. A young Americaine comes in — a little shapely dusk thing, with fireflies in her pupils. A despair lies over me — I cannot play with life as she can. Bernhard plays too, and I feel heavy. In course of conversation he says that a…
Bernhard Berenson:“A place becomes provincial by believing it is not so. No place is so provincial as London”.
Edith Cooper:[sung] The Americaine goes — will Bernhard go? is a question that almost stops my heart. Yes — he gives his hand to all, and leaves. There is no beauty like freedom. No grace that must not be foregone for freedom. Mary shows me the studio under our vine tree where a painter lives with his mistress. We seem to live in the air of a French novel. At Duval’s we chose a table — They come in. We watch them — they come up to us, Bernhard says
Bernhard Berenson:“Miss Cooper and I should marry and be miserable ever after.”
Edith Cooper:I am powerless to shake off such remarks with irony or wit. I suffer, I hate. But it is true — we give one another no pleasure; the fascination we have for each other makes us wretched.
Michael Field: Bernhard:beauty, allure, mercurial, cruel, Katherine: beloved, familiar, constancy, constantly Freedom, captivity… the price you pay (practical) Edith makes her choice and it is constancy that prevails. Not long after, when Edith is laid low with a life-threatening fever, the rewards of constancy are reaped. Katherine at her bedside is the safety and surety that Edith depends on to grow strong again. Time clatters on. Katherine, on a train to Dover, distils in a poem a marriage vow, unifying Edith and her as poets and lovers evermore.
Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper:It was deep April, and the morn Shakespeare was born; The world was on us, pressing sore; My love and I took hands and swore, Against the world, to be Poets and lovers evermore. To laugh and dream on Lethe's shore, To sing to Charon in his boat, Heartening the timid souls afloat; Of judgement never to take heed, But to those fast-locked souls to speed, Who never from Apollo fled, Who spent no hour among the dead; Continually With them to dwell, Indifferent to heaven and hell.
Michael Field:Time indifferently slips away. New Year’s Eve. Michael Field is writing. We never stop writing. The tumult of recent years has receded but the quicksand of obscurity menaces us… the books aren’t selling.
Katherine Bradley:[sung] There's much to make this year close in cynicism. We have published two books that have been received with silence or with hate. Most of our friends are further from us than last year. Still feel that much misery springs from the fact that we have not drawn on the infinite. We have asked for a happiness that could not have been given to us without being taken from others.
Edith Cooper:Yes, the year 1892 has been the bitterest I ever spent. We have given our work to a silent world. Twice have we given to the silence. I love in a deathly way. I long for freedom, England's a Prison. The book might be a deader. We have not got on friendly terms with any of the publishers at Bodley Head. And younger authors than we are have been pushed before us. We are desperately alone in this world that shuns us. What can it be?
Michael Field:Now, this is familiar… We have been here before! A small, dark theatre, Actors, scripts in hand, two women in a box by the stage, something about memory… Aha! This is our first attempt at a modern prose play, A Question of Memory, our Hungarian epic! It was picked up by the Independent Theatre Society and is to be staged at the Opera Comique. [curious] A glimmer of hope. Limelight, a new beginning… and a last chance
Edith Cooper:Five o'clock, the gas lamps are lighted the sun is setting.
The Critics:As a whole, we must admit that A Question of Memory is not markedly dramatic. The first act is almost wholly useless. All that takes place and it can be made clear in the dialogue of the second, the second moves slowly. The third is really strong, it is indeed the pitch as well as the pivot of the piece. While the fourth is scarcely dramatic... were only moderately successful and the work suffers from the fact that it takes a wearisome time to approach the climax time that is spent in the development of characters which do not repeat the labor bestowed upon them. A complicated mixture of love... Michael Field has earned an honorable if somewhat limited reputation as a writer of dramas in verse, but in prose in the difficulties of a more exacting medium, Michael Field does not show to so much advantage. It is indeed difficult to write good prose, but it is not well that the difficulty should be conspicuous. And in A Question of Memory, the difficulty is patent, flagrant, ostentatious... just where the experience of the authors and the practical work of the stage betrays itself. Their story is very long and on the whole very trivial, though concisely and pointedly written and the heroism of the mother and sister who prefer to die rather than the prisoner should prove faithless to his trust, passes was the comprehension of an ordinary theatrical audience a week play ends weakly
Edith Cooper:It seems more natural to be dead than alive. We wake to the surprise of finding every morning paper against us. The Times, The Telegraph are worthy of respect in their blame. They have some good words for us and our actors. The rest howl.
Katherine Bradley:Not a flower was given to us. No word, no letter, no visit. Only the execrations of the press. Friends have been very caressing but they avoid allusions to our art as if it were a dead husband.
Michael Field:A new voice silenced. Promise broken. Dreams dashed. Wounded retreat. Heedless, time moves on. We are writing and writing, day after day after day, page after page after… Oh, nothing… for… for two months.(plucks a flower from the pages of the book) A flower... tear stains…A telegram… Father!
Callirhoe:I am afraid Father has met with an accident. He started slightly ahead of us to Riffel, not seen since, everything being done... Not Found - official inquiry.
Michael Field:Father, old but still strong, had gone walking in the Alps. Two months of searching for him and he is found at the bottom of a ravine, 40ft below the precipice he fell from. His head on his hand as if he were sleeping.
Katherine Bradley:He lay asleep, and the long dark season wore. The forest shadows marked him limb by limb As on a dial: when the light grew dim, A steady darkness on the spiny floor, He lay asleep. The Alpine roses bore Their last blooms and withered at the rim The harvest moon came down and covered him, And passed, and it was stiller than before. Then fell the autumn, little falling there Save some quick-dropping fir-cone on the mound, Save with the ebbing leaves his own white hair; And the great stars grew wintry; in the cold Of a wide-spreading dusk, so woodmen say, As one asleep on his right arm he lay.
Michael Field:Time, like the Thames twinkling through the parlour window, is slowly flowing away. The scene opens at No. 1 The Paragon, our home in Richmond. A bookshelf overflowing with large bound notebooks, our diaries. Some full to bursting with letters, artefacts and yellowing newspaper clippings, one, down stage left, less so, there’s been less to add in recent times. We are fading. Edith, who has battled illness most of her life is diagnosed with terminal cancer aged only 49.
Edith Cooper:February 1911. There can be no removal, only a hideous operation of alleviation from what has to come. The doctor, Scottish, kind and fond of me, is hard and speaks intemperately. He's a hard executioner and he goes soon. It was like this when the vet left me with the news of Whym, only then the tears came. I'm too cold for weeping, drifts of bitter rain...
Michael Field:Time is escaping…. less than two years since Edith's diagnosis, Katherine has herself been diagnosed with breast cancer, a fact she conceals from Edith. We alight here, on an evening in September a few months before Edith's death.
Sophie Goldrick:It is cousin Francis's last night. I am listening to Henry's voice, Henny, reading my love poems aloud to Francis. I've never listened to them before. She reads the famous sonnet 'A Window Full of Ancient Things.' For a little while, I am in paradise. It is infinitely soft between us, warm buds open. Francis, who has loved me so well, listens to the singing'mid the boughs that is not for him. Listening as he would listen to a nightingale overhead.
Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper: A window full of ancient things, and while, Lured by their solemn tints, I crossed the street, A face was there that in its tranquil style, Almost obscure, at once remote and sweet, Moved me by pleasure of similitude - For, flanked by golden ivories, that face, Her face, looked forth in even and subdued Deep power, while all the shining, all the grace Came from the passing of Time over her, Sorrow with Time, there was no age, no spring: On those smooth brows no promise was astir, No hope outlived:herself a perfect thing, She stood by that reliquary Simple as Aphrodite by the sea.
Michael Field:[curious] Time stops, yet carries on. Time reaches backwards whilst stretching forwards. Time falls into line and yet loops around in an unceasing spiral, a storybook creature chasing its own flailing tail. Time snags on a page and yet freely cartwheels through space. We wait. And wait… and wait… and wait… Until…[pause, seeing the audience] there you are. Edith dies in December 1913, and Katherine less than a year later. [curious] Time stops, yet carries on. Time reaches backwards whilst stretching forwards. Time falls into line and yet loops around in an unceasing spiral, a storybook creature chasing its own flailing tail. Time snags on a page and yet freely cartwheels through space. We wait. And wait… and wait… and wait… Until…[pause, seeing the audience] there you are.
Sophie Goldrick:Veritable Michael is a Shadow Opera production. Music composed by Tom Floyd words by Michael Field created and produced by Sophie Goldrick and Tom Floyd, performances by Lizzie Holmes, Sophie Goldrick James Long and Patrick Neyman. Thanks to our guest speakers, Professor Marion Thain, Professor Carolyn Dever, Dr. Ana Parejo Vadillo and Dr. Sarah Parker. Veritable Michael is generously supported by the Ralph Vaughan Williams Trust, the Steven Oliver Award and the Countess of Munster Musical Trust and our incredible band of crowdfunders. For more information Video content or just to tell us you're loving the podcast. Go to shadow opera.com/veritable-michael or via our Instagram. Don't forget to rate review and subscribe to the podcast.