Mrs. Satan was what the press called her.
She represented the worst fears of the male establishment.
She was a dangerous woman.
She dared to run for President at a time when women couldn’t vote.
She scandalized conventional morality by daring to flaunt women’s sexuality.
She spent election night in jail.
PFW has long supported the work of Victoria Bond
on April 27, 2020 @ 7:30 pm at Symphony Space in NYC her
In honor of the 100th anniversary of Women’s Suffrage, Cutting Edge Concerts presents a concert performance of the opera, Mrs. President, about the first woman to run for President, by composer Victoria Bond, and librettist Hilary Bell. The cast includes: Valerie Bernhardt (Victoria Woodhull); Scott Ramsay (Henry Ward Beecher); Michael Kelly (Col. James Blood); Katie Hannigan (Roxie); Keely Futterer (Isabella Beecher); David Charles Tay (Joseph Treat); Addie Rose Forstman (Elizabeth Tilton). With pianist Marc Peloquin and conducted by Victoria Bond.
Victoria Woodhull clairvoyant, radical, publisher, jailbird, stockbroker, free lover, was a Presidential candidate. She scaled the heights of high society before her exposure of a sex scandal involving the popular preacher Henry Ward Beecher sent her plummeting. Admired by some and feared by many, Woodhull was dubbed “Mrs. Satan” by political satirist Thomas Nast.
Her life reads like grand opera. It has all the drama of myth and legend, and yet she was real, and human and at times, frail. Mrs. President focuses on Victoria’s relationship with Beecher, and how these two powerful and charismatic people at first tried to love, and then to destroy each other.
