The World's Wife
In The World’s Wife, the poet Carol Ann Duffy explores history from a female perspective; Tom W Green’s chamber opera brings her poetry vividly to life in a contemporary meditation on gender politics.
Carol Ann Duffy’s poetry collection The World’s Wife (1999) is a unique response to the way that women have been pushed into the shadows of their menfolk over the centuries – in myth, fairy tales, the Bible and history itself. From the bitter ennui of Mrs Aesop to the insights of a very modern young girl in ‘Little Red Cap’ and the single-verse disgust with which Mrs Icarus watches her husband plunge to earth, the former Poet Laureate brings to well-known narratives new angles that are always fresh, sometimes funny and often furious.
Tom W Green’s idea for this work was sparked when the leader of the Mavron Quartet asked him to create a substantial piece for the ensemble. He had previously written this all-female group a 10-minute quartet; now a longer span with the addition of a solo soprano offered greater possibilities. This combination is further extended through the use of loop pedals, a live electronic device that enables the singer to create the effect of a vocal ensemble, bringing back motifs or phrases in extra layers of sound as the music unfolds.
Looking for a suitable text, Green came across The World’s Wife and was enchanted, both by the topical gender politics and by Duffy’s use of language, metre and timbre. He was able to meet her backstage after a reading, introduced himself and in due course received her permission to set the poems, selecting 11 from the original 31, chiefly, though not exclusively, homing in on the fictional or mythical characters.
The World’s Wife was conceived initially as a song-cycle, but soon spiralled into a fully stageable chamber opera. It was first produced by Welsh National Opera in 2017.
‘It makes excellent theatre – a theatre of sound and words, certainly … and all the better for a certain ambiguity of aim,’ wrote The Arts Desk’s critic Stephen Walsh. It was subsequently shortlisted for a BASCA award.
For this new production, Green has recast the opera for the dramatic baritone voice of Lucia Lucas, cutting a few verses and one whole scene (‘Frau Freud’) and adding an epilogue that homes in on insights from the performers. Five years on, refreshing the work for a trans baritone, Green says that he intends also to renew the work’s intense relevance to gender politics of the moment, bringing today’s preoccupations into focus.
All the musical substance is derived from works by women composers of different eras who were sidelined by the misogynistic attitudes of their day. They include Francesca Caccini and Barbara Strozzi of the Italian Baroque, the 19th-century Clara Schumann and the British 20th-century modernist Elisabeth Lutyens. Strozzi is a particular favourite of Green’s, who praises her ‘sense of line’ as a powerful inspiration to him in general, not only here.
‘I wanted to make a conscious point that there are other voices contributing,’ Green comments. ‘We’re always standing on the shoulders of giants, and as composers, we always inhabit a musical space that others have opened up for us before. Just as the poems demonstrate that women have been erased from mythical and historical narratives, women have also been erased from compositional narratives, despite contributing enormous amounts.’
The opera opens with ‘Little Red Cap’ and her encounter with the Wolf, the tale reinvented for the present day: an inquisitive young woman is deflowered by a predatory older man and ultimately takes revenge. Next, Pilate’s wife is haunted not only by her soft-handed husband, but by the man he is condemning to death on the cross. ‘Mrs Aesop’ is bored and exasperated by Mr Aesop’s dull and clichéd fables. The extended, icy story of ‘Queen Herod’ is full of horror and fear for her own child; here, Green says, the music is built from material by Clara Schumann and Elisabeth Lutyens.
‘Salome’, shown as a drunken seductress, is a pointed contrast, followed by ‘Mrs Icarus’, the shortest and most sardonic poem. ‘Medusa’ is depicted as a wife tragically soured by jealousy over a philandering husband. ‘Anne Hathaway’, however, is the one moment when the possibility of love shines through. Widowed, she cherishes the memory of her husband William Shakespeare: ‘Some nights, I dreamed he’d written me, the bed a page beneath his writer’s hands.’
‘Mrs Beast’ delves towards the heart of the matter, evoking a cavalcade of fairy-tale figures in dire straits or, in the case of the Little Mermaid, fishnet tights. Now there builds the Wives’ Choir, in which the singer’s loops mingle into a self-generated, multivoiced ensemble.
The final ‘wife’ is liberated from all that has gone before, without reference to any male figure: ‘Demeter’ evokes the pure motherly love of the Greek goddess for her daughter – implicitly Persephone, returning from winter in the Underworld. Again, the loop device creates a suitably other-worldly effect.
The new version of the opera ends with an epilogue based on extracts of interviews with the performers themselves, bringing the story finally into the here and now.
© Jessica Duchen
Details
Programme and performers
Tom W Green The World’s Wife
Ragazze Quartet:
Rosa Arnold violin
Jeanita Vriens-van Tongeren violin
Annemijn Bergkotte viola
Rebecca Wise cello
Lucia Lucas baritone
Tom W Green composer
Carol Ann Duffy libretto
Jorinde Keesmaat director
Sammy Van den Heuvel scenography
Sasja Strengholt costumes
Lalina Goddard dramaturgy
Radna Berendsen make-up and hairstyling
Tim van ’t Hof, Rohan McDermott lighting
Koen Keevel sound
Kate Packham production manager
Daniel Whewell technical manager
Libretto
Little Red-Cap
At childhood’s end, the houses petered out
into playing fields, the factory, allotments
kept, like mistresses, by kneeling married men,
the silent railway line, the hermit’s caravan,
till you came at last to the edge of the woods.
It was there that I first clapped eyes on the
wolf.
He stood in a clearing, reading his verse out
loud
in his wolfy drawl, a paperback in his hairy
paw,
red wine staining his bearded jaw. What big
ears
he had! What big eyes he had! What teeth!
In the interval, I made quite sure he spotted
me,
sweet sixteen, never been, babe, waif, and
bought me a drink,
my first. You might ask why. Here’s why. Poetry.
The wolf, I knew, would lead me deep into the
woods,
away from home, to a dark tangled thorny
place
lit by the eyes of owls. I crawled in his wake,
my stockings ripped to shreds, scraps of red
from my blazer
snagged on twig and branch, murder clues.
I lost both shoes
but got there, wolf’s lair, better beware.
Lesson one that night,
breath of the wolf in my ear, was the love
poem.
I clung till dawn to his thrashing fur, for
what little girl doesn’t dearly love a wolf?
Then I slid from between his heavy matted
paws
and went in search of a living bird – white
dove –
which flew, straight, from my hands to his
open mouth.
One bite, dead. How nice, breakfast in bed,
he said,
licking his chops. As soon as he slept, I crept to
the back
of the lair, where a whole wall was crimson,
gold, aglow with books.
Words, words were truly alive on the tongue,
in the head,
warm, beating, frantic, winged; music and
blood.
But then I was young – and it took ten years
in the woods to tell that a mushroom
stoppers the mouth of a buried corpse, that
birds
are the uttered thought of trees, that a
greying wolf
howls the same old song at the moon, year in,
year out,
season after season, same rhyme, same
reason. I took an axe
to a willow to see how it wept. I took an axe to
a salmon
to see how it leapt. I took an axe to the wolf
as he slept, one chop, scrotum to throat, and
saw
the glistening, virgin white of my
grandmother’s bones.
I filled his old belly with stones. I stitched
him up.
Out of the forest I come with my flowers,
singing, all alone.
Pilate’s Wife
Firstly, his hands — a woman’s. Softer than
mine,
with pearly nails, like shells from Galilee.
Indolent hands. Camp hands that clapped for
grapes.
Their pale, mothy touch made me flinch.
Pontius.
I longed for Rome, home, someone else.
When the Nazarene
entered Jerusalem, my maid and I crept out,
bored stiff, disguised, and joined the frenzied
crowd.
I tripped, clutched the bridle of an ass, looked
up
and there he was. His face? Ugly. Talented.
He looked at me. I mean he looked at me. My
God.
His eyes were eyes to die for. Then he was
gone,
his rough men shouldering a pathway to the
gates.
The night before his trial, I dreamt of him.
His brown hands touched me. Then it hurt.
Then blood. I saw that each tough palm was
skewered
by a nail. I woke up, sweating, sexual,
terrified.
Leave him alone. I sent a warning note, then
quickly dressed.
When I arrived, the Nazarene was crowned
with thorns.
The crowd was baying for Barabbas. Pilate
saw me,
looked away, then carefully turned up his
sleeves
and slowly washed his useless, perfumed
hands.
They seized the prophet then and dragged
him out,
up to the Place of Skulls. My maid knows all
the rest.
Was he God? Of course not. Pilate believed
he was.
Mrs Aesop
By Christ, he could bore for Purgatory. He was
small
didn’t prepossess. So he tried to impress.
Dead men,
Mrs Aesop, he’d say, tell no tales. Well, let me
tell you now
that the bird in his hand shat on his sleeve,
never mind the two worth less in the bush.
Tedious.
Going out was worst. He’d stand at our gate,
look, then leap;
scour the hedgerows for a shy mouse, the
fields
for a sly fox, the sky for one particular
swallow
that couldn’t make a summer. The jackdaw,
according to him,
envied the eagle. Donkeys, would, on the
whole, prefer to be lions.
On one appalling evening stroll, we passed
an old hare
snoozing in a ditch – he stopped and made a
note – and then,
about a mile further on, a tortoise,
somebody’s pet,
creeping, slow as marriage, up the road. Slow but certain, Mrs Aesop, wins the race.
Asshole.
What race? What sour grapes? What silk
purse,
sow’s ear, dog in a manger, what big fish?
Some days
I could barely keep awake as the story
droned on
towards the moral of itself. Action, Mrs A,
speaks louder
than words. And that’s another thing, the sex
was diabolical. I gave him a fable one night
about a little cock that wouldn’t crow, a razor-
sharp axe
with a heart blacker than the pot that called
the kettle.
I’ll cut off your tail, all right, I said, to save my
face.
That shut him up. I laughed last, longest.
Queen Herod
Ice in the trees.
Three Queens at the Palace gates,
dressed in furs, accented;
their several sweating, panting beasts
laden for a long hard trek,
following the guide and boy to the stables;
courteous, confident; oh, and with gifts
for the King and Queen of here – Herod, me –
in exchange for sunken baths, curtained beds,
fruit, the best of meat and wine,
dancers, music, talk –
as it turned out to be,
with everyone fast asleep, save me,
those vivid three –
till bitter dawn.
They were wise. Older than I.
They knew what they knew.
Once drunken Herod’s head went back,
they asked to see her,
fast asleep in her crib,
my little child.
Silver and gold,
the loose change of herself,
glowed in the soft bowl of her face.
Grace, said the tallest Queen.
Strength, said the Queen with the hennaed
hands.
The black Queen
made a tiny starfish of my daughter’s fist,
said Happiness; then stared at me,
Queen to Queen, with insolent lust.
Watch, they said, for a star in the east –
a new star
pierced through the night like a nail.
It means he’s here, alive, newborn.
Who? Him. The Husband. Hero. Hunk.
The Boy Next Door. The Paramour. The
Je t’adore.
The Marrying Kind. Adulterer. Bigamist.
The Wolf. The Rip. The Rake. The Rat.
The Heartbreaker. The Ladykiller. Mr Right.
My baby stirred,
suckled the empty air for milk,
till I knelt
and the black Queen scooped out my breast,
the left, guiding it down
to the infant’s mouth.
No man, I swore,
will make her shed one tear.
A peacock screamed outside.
Afterwards, it seemed like a dream.
I saw the fierce eyes of the black Queen
flash again, felt her urgent warnings scald
my ear. Watch for a star, a star.
It means he’s here …
Some swaggering lad to break her heart,
some wincing Prince to take her name away
and give a ring, a nothing, a nought in gold.
I sent for the Chief of Staff,
a mountain man
with a red scar, like a tick
to the mean stare of his eye.
Take men and horses,
knives, swords, cutlasses.
Ride East from here
and kill each mother’s son.
Do it. Spare not one.
The midnight hour. The chattering stars
shivered in a nervous sky.
Orion to the South
who knew the score, who’d seen,
not seen, then seen it all before;
the yapping Dog Star at his heels.
High up in the West
a studded, diamond W.
And then, as prophesied,
blatant, brazen, buoyant in the East –
and blue –
The Boyfriend’s Star.
We do our best,
we Queens, we mothers,
mothers of Queens.
We wade through blood
for our sleeping girls.
We have daggers for eyes.
Behind our lullabies,
the hooves of terrible horses
thunder and drum.
4.75
Ladies, Ladies, Ladies
Salome
I’d done it before (and doubtless I’ll do it
again, sooner or later)
woke up with a head on the pillow beside me – whose? –
what did it matter?
Good-looking, of course, dark hair, rather
matted;
the reddish beard several shades lighter;
with very deep lines around the eyes,
from pain, I’d guess, maybe laughter;
and a beautiful crimson mouth that obviously
knew
how to flatter …
which I kissed …
Colder than pewter.
Strange. What was his name? Peter?
Simon? Andrew? John? I knew I’d feel better
for tea, dry toast, no butter,
so rang for the maid.
And, indeed, her innocent clatter
of cups and plates,
her clearing of clutter,
her regional patter,
were just what I needed –
hungover and wrecked as I was from a night
on the batter.
Never again!
I needed to clean up my act,
get fitter,
cut out the booze and the fags and the sex.
Yes. And as for the latter,
it was time to turf out the blighter,
the beater or biter,
who’d come like a lamb to the slaughter
to Salome’s bed.
In the mirror, I saw my eyes glitter.
I flung back the sticky red sheets,
and there, like I said – and ain’t life a bitch –
was his head on a platter.
Mrs Icarus
I’m not the first or the last
To stand on a hillock,
Watching the man she married
Prove to the world
He’s a total, utter, absolute, Grade A pillock.
Medusa
A suspicion, a doubt, a jealousy
grew in my mind,
which turned the hairs on my head to filthy
snakes,
as though my thoughts
hissed and spat on my scalp.
My bride’s breath soured, stank
in the grey bags of my lungs.
I’m foul mouthed now, foul tongued,
yellow fanged.
There are bullet tears in my eyes.
Are you terrified?
Be terrified.
It’s you I love,
perfect man, Greek God, my own;
but I know you’ll go, betray me, stray
from home.
So better by far for me if you were stone.
I glanced at a buzzing bee,
a dull grey pebble fell
to the ground.
I glanced at a singing bird,
a handful of dusty gravel
spattered down.
I looked at a ginger cat,
a housebrick
shattered a bowl of milk.
I looked at a snuffling pig,
a boulder rolled
in a heap of shit.
I stared in the mirror.
Love gone bad
showed me a Gorgon.
I stared at a dragon.
Fire spewed
from the mouth of a mountain.
And here you come
with a shield for a heart
and a sword for a tongue
and your girls, your girls.
Wasn’t I beautiful?
Wasn’t I fragrant and young?
Look at me now.
Look at me now.
Look
Anne Hathaway
‘Item I gyve unto my wife my second best
bed ...’
(from Shakespeare’s will)
The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where we would dive for pearls. My lover’s
words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as
kisses
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his touch
a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.
Some nights, I dreamed he’d written me, the
bed
a page beneath his writer’s hands. Romance
and drama played by touch, by scent, by
taste.
In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,
dribbling their prose. My living laughing
love –
I hold him in the casket of my widow’s head
as he held me upon that next best bed.
Mrs Beast
These myths going round, these legends,
fairytales,
I’ll put them straight; so when you stare
Into my face – Helen’s face, Cleopatra’s,
Queen of Sheba’s, Juliet’s – then, deeper,
Gaze into my eyes – Nefertiti’s, Mona Lisa’s,
Garbo’s eyes - think again. The Little Mermaid
slit
Her shining, silver tail in two, rubbed salt
Into that stinking wound, got up and walked,
In agony, in fishnet tights, stood up and
smiled, waltzed,
All for a Prince, a pretty boy, a charming one
Who’d dump her in the end, chuck her, throw
her overboard.
I could have told her – look, love, I should
know,
They’re bastards when they’re Princes.
What you want to do is find yourself a beast.
The sex
Is better.
On my poker nights, the Beast
Kept out of sight. We were a hard school,
tough as fuck,
All of us beautiful and rich – the Woman
Who Married a Minotaur, Goldilocks, the Bride
Of the Bearded Lesbian, Frau Yellow Dwarf,
et Moi.
I watched those wonderful women shuffle and
deal –
Five and Seven Card Stud, Sidewinder, Hold
‘Em, Draw –
I watched them bet and raise and call.
But behind each player stood a line of ghosts
Unable to win. Eve, Ashputtel. Marilyn
Monroe.
Rapunzel slashing wildly at her hair.
Bessie Smith unloved and down and out.
Bluebeard’s wives, Henry VIII’s, Snow White
Cursing the day she left the seven dwarfs,
Diana,
Princess of Wales. The sheepish Beast came in
With a tray of schnapps at the end of the
game
And we stood for the toast – Fay Wray –
Then tossed our fiery drinks to the back of our
crimson throats.
Bad girls. Serious ladies. Mourning our dead.
So I was hard on the Beast, win or lose,
When I got upstairs, those tragic girls in my
head,
Turfing him out of bed; standing alone
On the balcony, the night so cold I could taste the stars
On the tip of my tongue. And I made a
prayer –
Thumbing my pearls, the tears of Mary, one
by one,
Like a rosary – words for the lost, the captive
beautiful,
The wives, those less fortunate than we.
Wives Choir texts
– Look at me now
– We do our best, we Queens, we mothers,
mothers of Queens
– I’m not the first or the last
– Ladies, Ladies, Ladies
– Be terrified, it’s you I love
The moon was a hand-mirror breathed on by
a Queen.
My breath was a chiffon scarf for an elegant
ghost.
I turned to go back inside. Bring me the Beast
for the night.
Bring me the wine-cellar key. Let the less-
loving one be me.
Demeter
Where I lived – winter and hard earth.
I sat in my cold stone room
choosing tough words, granite, flint,
to break the ice. My broken heart –
I tried that, but it skimmed,
flat, over the frozen lake.
She came from a long, long way,
but I saw her at last, walking,
my daughter, my girl, across the fields,
in bare feet, bringing all spring’s flowers
to her mother’s house. I swear
the air softened and warmed as she moved,
the blue sky smiling, none too soon,
with the small shy mouth of a new moon.
Carol Ann Duffy (born 1955)
Artist biographies
The Ragazze Quartet plays both classical and modern string quartet repertoire. It has made a name for itself with appealing but unconventional programmes. Part of this innovation derives from collaborations with the most original voices in theatre, dance and literature. With performances that speak to all the senses, the group appeals both to new and established string-quartet audiences.
The Ragazze Quartet enjoys a close working relationship with Channel Classics and has released no fewer than eight CDs on the label: Vivere, Česko, FourFourThree, Spiegel, Bartók Bound Vols 1 and 2, Winterreise and Open Spaces. These have met with warm critical acclaim.
The quartet gives an average of 70 concerts a year in leading venues such as the Concertgebouw and the Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ in Amsterdam, as well as participating in concert series and festivals throughout the Netherlands. International tours have taken the Ragazze to the UK, Sweden, China, Japan, Indonesia and the USA, among many others.
Collaboration is at the heart of much of the quartet’s activities, whether with young musicians and theatre producers or leading organisations and ensembles, including the Netherlands Dance Theatre, Kronos Quartet, Orkater and the Holland Festival.
In addition, the quartet has taken over artistic leadership of September Me in Amersfoort, a chamber music festival that transforms the city into the epicentre of trendsetting classical music. Here, the Ragazze not only performs itself, but also invites the newest generation of top-class artists who are not afraid of breaking with tradition.
The Ragazze Quartet studied at the Dutch String Quartet Academy, graduating in 2011. In 2013 it won the Kersjes Prize, an award given annually to a major new talent on the Dutch chamber music scene.
In 2017 the Ragazze Quartet won the Operadagen Rotterdam Award for its ‘quirky music-theatrical approach, social engagement and the ease with which it dares to think outside the confines of traditional expertise’.
American baritone Lucia Lucas is making waves on the operatic stages of the world and has performed in cities worldwide, including Dublin, London, Brussels, Berlin, Turin, Essen and Daegu, as well as widely in the United States.
Operatic highlights include acclaimed role debuts as Wotan (Die Walküre) with Theater Magdeburg and the title-role in Don Giovanni with Tulsa Opera.
In 2022 Lucia Lucas won the prestigious Hörspielpreis der Kriegsblinden (War Blinded Prize), with co-author Noam Brusilovsky, for their SWR production of Working on the Role, which explores the singer’s life. She was also featured on GRAMMY.com’s TRANScendent Sounds 2022.
This season she returns to the Metropolitan Opera as Gretch (Fedora), English National Opera as the Sacristan (Tosca) and Bard SummerScape as the Host (Vaughan Williams’s Sir John in Love), as well as tours with the Ragazze Quartet of The World’s Wife and Schubert’s Winterreise at the Wonderfeel Festival. She also makes her debut with the Lyric Opera of Chicago in Caroline Shaw’s Four Portraits.
Next season Lucia Lucas will create the role of Lili Elbe in the world premiere of Tobias Picker’s eponymous opera, a role written for her, in addition to appearances at the Metropolitan Opera and Hawaii Opera.
Recent highlights have included her Metropolitan Opera debut as Angelotti (Tosca) and the role of Hannah Before (As One) with Atlanta Opera. In addition, she sang Entwurf einem Rheinlandschaft at the Monheim Festival and Aria di Potenza – an unconventional synthesis of opera, fashion and politics, directed by Krystian Lada – at the Weimar Arts Festival, as well appearances at Houston Grand Opera, the Harvey Milk Festival and Manhattan School of Music.
In the 2020–21 season she filmed performances as Satan (Martinů’s The tears of the knife) with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, as well as Die Neuen Todsünden (‘The New Deadly Sins’) with the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe, and sang the title-role in Rigoletto with Theater Magdeburg.
She was for five years a festival artist with the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe, performing various roles, including Thoas (Iphigénie en Aulide), Ford (Falstaff), Marcello (La bohème), Varlaam (Boris Godunov), Kothner (Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg), Dr Teller (Doctor Atomic), the Speaker (The Magic Flute) and the title-role in The Marriage of Figaro.
Lucia Lucas is proud to have performed for many different venues and festivals, such as speciality arts festivals, queer venues and one-woman shows.
Jorinde Keesmaat is a Dutch director of opera and staged classical concerts. From 2016 to 2019 she was Guest Director in Residence at the Center for Contemporary Opera in New York. From 2020 to 2022 she held the same position at National Sawdust in Brooklyn. She is currently is Director in Residence at the Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ in Amsterdam.
In her immersive multidisciplinary work, she plays with the relationship between spectator and actor/musician, and boundaries between classical concerts, opera and theatre. She is known for her contemporary take on the art form and specialises in creating opera from scratch. She has directed productions of Don Giovanni, The Magic Flute and The Marriage of Figaro for the the Hague Philharmonic; Hansel and Gretel for the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra; and La clemenza di Tito for Opéra National de Montpellier in France.
For the Center of Contemporary Opera, she directed Pascal Dusapin’s To be sung and a Louis Andriessen double bill Odysseus’ Women and Anaïs Nin, with performances at National Sawdust and in the Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ Amsterdam. She also directed Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges for the Belgium National Orchestra. She created a preview of the drag queen opera Chimera by composer Angelica Negron for National Sawdust and The Magic Flute for Opera Zuid in the Netherlands.
She developed the concept Shape Shifters for the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and violinist Pekka Kuusisto in Germany and led the project Fantastic Women, consisting of new work by 10 international female composers. Future projects include the new operas Sin- Eater by David T Little and La Luz Musical, as well as the immersive She/her/me opera project using the music of Philip Glass.
Her accolades include the Operadagen Award from the Rotterdam Operadagen Festival.
Produced by the Barbican
Supported by Cockayne – Grants for the Arts, The London Community Foundation, and Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands
