The life of a forgotten suffragist, in song

Victoria Woodhull, a once-famous suffragist who has since slipped out of remembrance, will have her life story told in “Victory for Victoria.”

Say “Susan B. Anthony,” and the average person can rattle off any number of achievements. Leading member of the women’s suffrage movement. Tireless social reformer. Face on a silver dollar. Say “Victoria Woodhull,” and you don’t have the same reaction about the woman Anthony once – though not always – saw as a leader to follow in the women’s rights movement, who would later make history as the first woman to run for president yet slip out of public awareness a century later.

The first steps to changing that, at least locally, are being taken by Milwaukee Opera Theatre, which will open its 2013-14 season this weekend with a two-night concert staging of Victory for Victoria, a musical about Woodhull’s life.

MOT artistic director Jill Anna Ponasik said the musical came to the company “almost fully formed” – the brainchild of sisters Susan Peterson Holmes and Peggy Peterson Ryan. She said the duo brought in the show’s book and lyrics, as well as some outlines for some musical numbers, making it easy for them to connect with a composer (in this case, Alissa Rhode) and let MOT develop the project into a more fully realized form. “We hear it in our heads, but singers and actors give us a fuller picture,” Peterson Ryan said.

The musical, both sisters’ first, was conceived under non-ideal circumstances: unemployment and bed rest. While Peterson Ryan was recovering from a broken wrist and between jobs, Peterson Holmes, laid off herself, told her about a book she’d just read, about Woodhull’s presidential run and life story. The two grew up in a musical household built firmly on the pillars of Gilbert and Sullivan (“We were the weird kids,” Peterson Ryan jokes) and had remained active with the arts ever since, so they decided to fill their time writing a musical theater piece about Victoria.

This political cartoon by Thomas Nast, depicting Woodhull as a “Mrs. Satan” trying to lead women astray, is just one of the many obstacles faced by the suffragist.

Hearing them relay details of Woodhull’s life, it’s easy to see the appeal. Born the daughter of a snake-oil salesman, Victoria, often alongside her sister Tennie Clafin, achieved a staggering number of feats, including opening the first female-run brokerage on Wall Street, publishing an influential feminist journal, petitioning Congress and the aforementioned presidential run, ultimately marred by obscenity charges that would unjustly land her in prison. “We just found her fascinating, bewitching,” Peterson Ryan said. “We could have written so much more; we had to pick the highlights, basically.”

The result is a condensed and dramatized – but never fictionalized, they hasten to add – retelling of Woodhull’s life, with words and music that feel perfect for the historical time period yet as fresh as any 21st-century musical or song cycle (although with a dash of their beloved Gilbert and Sullivan too). Rhode based some songs on actual pieces from the time period, including lifting a song wholesale from The Black Crook, an actual musical from the 1870s, but also had to write songs that fit in with the others. “Alissa has captured the sensibility of the period with a modern twist,” Peterson Ryan said.

The cast of “Victory for Victoria” will perform the musical as a concert recital.

From what I got to see at rehearsal, the Peterson sisters are right to praise her. By coincidence, I caught the beginning of the play, which, along with the ending, Peterson Holmes said they revised the rehearsal process. She and Peterson Ryan had originally experienced more difficulty crafting the middle section and expected that would need shoring up, but seeing it performed by actors made them realize the start and finish needed more adjustment instead. “They’re better for it,” she said, “more dramatic,” and while I can’t compare the show’s current “Prologue” to its original version, the opening number has a punch and drive that matches the ambition of the woman they’re reviving – and the ambitions of these women as well.

Milwaukee Opera Theater’s production of Victory for Victoria will be performed twice, on Friday, Sept. 6, and Saturday, Sept. 7, both performances at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $15, $20 for reserved seats and $10 for students/seniors. To order, visit MOT’s website.

Victory for Victoria features a cast of 10 singers: Kerry Hart Bieneman (Victoria Woodhull); Katy Johnson (Tennessee “Tennie” Claflin); Nathan Wesselowski (“Buck” Claflin); Joel Kopischke (Dr. Canning Woodhull); Alison Mary Forbes (Josie Mansfield/Susan B. Anthony); Adam Estes (Col. James Blood); Nathan Krueger (Cornelius Vanderbilt/Henry Ward Beecher); Kay Stiefel (Isabella Beecher Hooker); and Drew Brhel (Anthony Comstock), with Bob Balderson serving as narrator.