GAGE OPERA – SNM STUDY GUIDE OUTLINE

PUSHED ASIDE: Reclaiming Gage

An opera about Matilda Joslyn Gage, commissioned by the Society for New Music, was made possible by a grant from NYS REDC celebrating the Centenary of women’s suffrage in NYS in 2017, which was

begun by Gage, Susan B. Anthony & Elizabeth Cady Stanton right here in Central New York.

STUDY GUIDE produced by Richard Fields, SNM Education Coordinator, Neva Pilgrim, SNM Program Advisor, Don Little, Nottingham High School AP World & SUPA American History Teacher, Honor Society and Mock Trial Advisor, composer Persis Parshall Vehar, librettist Gabrielle Vehar, Gage Foundation founder/director Sally Roesch Wagner, OHA Director Gregg Tripoli, LeMoyne College Grad student & SNM intern Meranda Beauvais who is Native American, with assistance from Stage Director Victoria King and the cast.

Production Information:

WORLD PREMIERE of complete opera with orchestra, 4pm Sunday January 21, 2018 Possible 2nd performance 7:30pm Friday Jan. 19th

Persis Parshall Vehar, composer Gabrielle Vehar, libretto Victoria King, director

Heather Buchman, conductor Neva Pilgrim, producer

Cast: Maud Gage Baum/Chorus……………………………… Julia Ebner L. Frank Baum/Chorus………………………………… Steven Stull Matilda Joslyn Gage…………………………………… Danan Tsan Susan B. Anthony/Chorus……………………………. . Juliane Price Elizabeth Cady Stanton/Chorus………………………… Laura Enslin John, Run-away Slave/Frederick Douglass/Chorus……. Gregory Sheppard Dr. Isaac Thomas, Native American/Chorus……………. Jonathan Howell Dr. Electa Thomas, Native American/Chorus…………….Jennifer Stevens (Oneida Nation)

Lighting: Bob Dwyer Props: SUNY-Oswego faculty and students Set: David Harper, with assistance from classes at SUNY-Oswego Costumes: Jody Luce, Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark Wigs: Marcia Ames Music Director/Pianist: Sar Shalom Strong

Letter from Education Director – Richard Fields

Matilda Joslyn Gage was a visionary of women’s rights and human liberation, who -- with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony -- wrote the arguments for, inspired the passions, and organized the political action of the 19th century women’s suffrage movement in the United States. This opera tells the story of a woman of courage and integrity publicly defying 19th century laws that forced complicity with slavery and denied women their autonomy and liberty – including the right to vote. This is also the story of a remarkable corner of the world, now known as Central New York that became a fount of free thought and radical activism for social justice.

About Matilda Joslyn Gage – Sally Roesch-Wagner, founder of the Gage Foundation

♦ 19th century suffragist, historian of women, newspaper editor, author and lecturer

♦ lived in Fayetteville, NY and raised 3 daughters and one son

♦ fought for woman’s rights, civil rights, and served as a top officer in the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) for 20 years

♦ a committed abolitionist who opened her home as a stop on the Underground Railroad, as had her father

♦ wrote about the superior position of Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) women and supported treaty rights and Native sovereignty

♦ influenced by the Haudenosaunee egalitarian culture, she in turn influenced the utopian feminist vision of her son-in-law, L. Frank Baum.

♦ 1893 volume Woman, Church and State, required reading in most Women’s Studies classes.

♦ Her motto, penciled into numerous autograph books and carved on her tombstone, embodies her political stand: “There is a word sweeter than mother, home or heaven. That word is liberty.”

About Persis Parshall Vehar, composer & Gabrielle Vehar, librettist

♦ Hailed by the New York Times for her musical “honesty, clarity and compositional skill”, PERSIS PARSHALL VEHAR has had works commissioned and performed by leading orchestras, such as the Buffalo Philharmonic & Colorado Symphony ♦ With over 300 compositions ranging from solo song to full orchestral works and operas, Vehar’s music has been performed at many of the leading concert halls throughout Europe and the U.S. ♦ She is the recipient of 30 annual ASCAP Plus Awards, seven Meet the Composer Grants, and is included in the International Museum’s Collection of Distinguished Musicians in London and the Biblioteque Internationale De Musique

Contemporaine in Paris. ♦ The Society for New Music produced & premiered Ms. Vehar’s 6th opera, Eleanor Roosevelt, based on a best-selling book by Cazenovia resident Rhoda Lerman ♦ Her 7th opera, SHOT!, based on the assassination of President McKinley, was recently commissioned by Dr. Judith Wolf and premiered in 2016 by Buffalo’s Nickel City Opera. ♦ Vehar holds a BM from Ithaca College and a MM from the Univ. of Michigan, and had three years’ post- graduate study in NYC. Among her composition teachers are Ned Rorem, known for his skill in setting texts.

♦ Librettist GABRIELLE VEHAR holds an M.S. in Communications from Ithaca College, and a B.F.A. in Acting and a B.A. in Theatre/Dance, with a Music Minor, from Case Western Reserve University, including additional studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music. ♦She has written the libretti for such works as GEORGE SAND…and CHOPIN? and ELEANOR ROOSEVELT and SHOT!

♦ As Music Director/Script Consultant, she has worked with schools throughout NY and the Midwest, as well as presenting lecture/demonstrations for universities such as Hiram College and Ithaca College. ♦ She has served as Director/Choreographer for children’s theatres and high schools and has been seen onstage in more than one thousand performances around the U.S. ♦ Currently working as a writer/editor on various projects, she is also on staff as a Consultant (Writer/Researcher/Choreographer) for KultureKids, a national non-profit organization with several international clients.

The through-line is: ALL FREEDOMS ARE EQUAL AND INTERCONNECTED

Synopsis: The opera opens in 1901 with Maud Gage Baum & L. Frank Baum at Matilda’s grave, remembering their engagement & Matilda’s reaction to it. They ‘awaken’ Matilda’s ghost.

Next we find Matilda returning home from delivering her first speech at the Syracuse convention, wondering if woman suffrage in 1852 is not unlike the abolitionism that she has been fighting for all her life.

The triumvirate (Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony & Matilda) strategize for gaining equal rights for women. The next scene finds Matilda calming a runaway slave in a duet about what freedom would mean to each of them.

In 1860 Elizabeth wishes her life was different as she & Susan begin working on divorce laws, leaving Matilda behind.

When doctors Electa & Isaac Thomas, both Haudenosaunee, come to check on baby Maud, Matilda discusses the Haudenosaunee’s views of the place of women in society, leading Matilda to realize that Native Americans deserve liberty, too.

The 1st act ends with all celebrating the end of the Civil War, and Matilda believing that liberty for all will soon be achieved.

The 2nd act opens in the 1870s with Matilda writing about Indian rights and a way for women to use the 14th Amendment.

Susan & Elizabeth ask her to join them in writing the History of Women Suffrage, but first they begin to devise the Declaration of the Rights of Woman to present at the Centennial, as their differences in values become more defined.

Ten years later we find Native American Dr. Electa Thomas telling Matilda she is honorarily adopted into the Wolf clan of the Mohawk nation for her efforts on behalf of the rights of Native Americans.

In the meantime, Susan and Frederick Douglass are comparing women’s rights to those of African Americans. By the 1890s Susan & Elizabeth worry that Matilda’s radical views on equality for ALL, and especially her radical views on religion, will jeopardize their path for women’s suffrage. Matilda however realizes that the rights of all people are interconnected.

The opera ends in 1901 with Maud & Frank at Matilda’s gravesite in Fayetteville, reminiscing about all they owe her: Frank for his “Oz’ fame and Matilda’s ideas that helped him ‘find his unique voice’, and Maud for their happy life together, as the chorus softly sings an “Alleluia.”

About the characters:

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

♦ spent summers in Peterboro learning of reform with and from her cousin Gerrit Smith

♦ It was in Peterboro that Cady met abolitionist Henry Brewster Stanton, her future husband

♦ Cady Stanton introduced her Peterboro cousin Elizabeth Smith Miller to Amelia Bloomer. Miller was wearing her trouser outfit. Bloomer advocated for the trouser costume in her newspaper for women’s health, and thus Miller’s outfit became called “bloomers.”

♦ Elizabeth Cady Stanton was described as a cheerful but uncompromising revolutionary, inspiring orator and outstanding philosopher.

Susan B. Anthony

♦ started collecting anti-slavery petitions as early as age 17

♦ In 1876, Anthony and Stanton began working with Matilda Joslyn Gage on what became the six-volume History of Woman Suffrage.

♦ traveled extensively speaking on behalf of women’s rights, with many of those speeches written by Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

♦ In 1872, Anthony was arrested for voting in her hometown of Rochester, New York, and convicted. She refused to pay the fine, and authorities took no action.

♦ The Nineteenth Amendment, not passed until 1920, was first introduced in 1878 by Anthony and Stanton.

♦ Accused of trying to destroy the institution of marriage when she began campaigning for women’s rights.

♦ By her 80th birthday she was invited to the White House, and in 1979 became the first woman to be depicted on U.S. coinage – the dollar coin.

John/Run-away Slave

♦ southern and uneducated; desperate to escape his captors and find his family. Frederick Douglass ♦ began life as a slave in Maryland, fled north, and became a leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts & New York State.

♦ Well-educated, he wrote many articles and several books

♦ Highly respected and known for his eloquent oratory, he supported equal rights for all.

Dr. Electa Thomas

♦ Onondaga herbal healer Dr. Isaac Thomas

♦ Mohawk, who received his training in western medicine, most likely at Bellevue

The Central New York State Regional/Syracuse Connections of the cast:

Danan Healy Tsan – Matilda – Alfred, NY native, Eastman grad, E. Syracuse resident

Gregory Sheppard – John, runaway slave/Frederick Douglass – Syracuse native, S.U. grad, NYC resident

Jonathan Howell – Dr. Isaac Thomas – DeWitt native, J-D grad, N. Texas grad (scholarship), Liverpool resident

Julia Ebner – Maud Gage Baum – Baldwinsville native, Binghamton University & Syracuse University

Steve Stull – L. Frank Baum – Ithaca resident since 1986, Oberlin & Eastman grad

Victoria King – stage director - NYC/Phoenix, NY, MS Ed in Theatre Education & undergraduate degrees in Theatre & Music from Loughborough Univ. in England, MFA Actors Studio Drama School where she studied directing with the late great Arthur Storch,

acting with Elizabeth Kemp and voice with Dr. Christopher Arneson. Syracuse resident

L. Frank Baum/Wizard of Oz connection – Sally Roesch Wagner

♦ It’s the story of Gage leading and inspiring her son-in-law, Oz author L. Frank Baum, to conclude that the path to liberation involves uncovering one’s lost courage, intelligence and compassion, and that behind the curtain of tyranny stands a buffoon.

Underground Railroad connection/Jerry Rescue – Gregg Tripoli, Onondaga Historical Association

♦ The Jerry Rescue, October 1, 1851, during the anti-slavery Liberty Party’s state convention.

♦ Earlier in 1851, Secretary of State Daniel Webster had warned that the law would be enforced even "here in Syracuse in the midst of the next Anti-Slavery Convention."

♦ The arrest was a message that the locally unpopular law would be enforced by federal authorities.

♦ When William Henry, who called himself ‘Jerry’, was arrested, word spread quickly and several hundred abolitionists broke into the city jail and freed him.

♦ Widely known as the Jerry Rescue, the 40 year old cooper from Missouri was hidden in Syracuse for several days, then taken to the Orson Ames House in Mexico, NY, and then to Oswego, where he crossed Lake Ontario into Canada.

The Society for New Music and this project is supported by the Central New York Community Foundation; the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of Gov. Cuomo & the NYS Legislature – GOS & AIE; Syracuse Sounds of Music Association; Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University; Amphion Foundation; John Ben Snow Foundation; Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation; Jim & Juli Boeheim Foundation; County of Onondaga, administered by CNY Arts; Richard Mather Foundation & private donations.

Matilda and the Underground Railroad

• Gage home dedicated to antislavery

• Father, Hezekiah Joslyn, nationally known abolitionist

• Railroad terms, “promised land” away from slave-fugitive hunters, path across 14 northern states

• Syracuse, Boston: openly abolitionist cities

• Gage home: 1 of 2 Fayetteville stops

• Matilda sheltered slaves until end of Civil War (1865)

• Gage home meeting place for workers advocating for anti-slavery, temperance, woman suffrage causes

• Husband, Henry Hill Gage, also involved with anti-slavery efforts

• Gage home is currently the Gage Foundation, 210 Genesee St., Fayetteville

• Gage Foundation took root in 2000 when Sally Roesch Wagner, the leading authority on Gage, brought together a nationwide network of diverse people with a common goal: to bring this vitally important suffragist back to her rightful place in history.

“We know we are right; we know we shall be successful, we know the day is not far distant, when this government and the world

will acknowledge the exact and permanent political equality of man and woman …”

– Matilda Joslyn Gage

● The National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum, Peterboro, NY, is chartered by the New York State Education Department, on the Heritage NY Underground Railroad Trail, on the Path through History, on the I LOVE NY LBGT Trail, on the Madison County Freedom Trail, and a founder and primary of the Underground Railroad Consortium of New York State.

● Site of the inaugural meeting of the New York State Antislavery Society in 1835 On the ‘Network to Freedom’ (website below)

● The Underground Railroad refers to the effort of enslaved African Americans to gain their freedom by escaping bondage.

● Their acts of self-emancipation made them "fugitives" according to the laws, though in retropsect "freedom seeker" seems a more

accurate description. While most completed their self-emancipation without assistance, each decade in which slavery was legal in the U.S. saw an increase in active efforts to assist escape.

● After the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, the Underground Railroad was deliberate and organized. Despite the illegality of their actions, people of all races, classes and genders participated in this widespread form of civil disobedience.

https://www.nps.gov/subjects/ugrr/about_ntf/index.htm

The "Great Cazenovia Fugitive Slave Law Convention" at Cazenovia, NY, August 21 and 22, 1850

● Cazenovia was a center of anti-slavery since the early 1830s and many leaders of the abolitionist movement were born or raised in Cazenovia or made Cazenovia their home. Among the most noted figures in the fight to abolish slavery, and the originally parallel campaign for women's rights, are Samuel J. May, James Caleb Jackson, Luther Myrick, Robert Green Ingersoll, Celia Burleigh and Theodore Dwight Weld. In nearby Peterboro was the home of Gerrit Smith, one of the most active leaders of all.

● On August 21 and 22, 1850, in the orchard of Grace Wilson's School on Sullivan Street in the village of Cazenovia, one of the largest and most important of the many abolition meetings was held. Between 2000 and 3000 people came to the Cazenovia Convention, including "a considerable number of escaped slaves," including famed orator Frederick Douglass and the Edmonson sisters. Leading abolitionists and rights activists of the time took the podium and spread their word calling for abolition of slavery.

● In the crowd was Cazenovia's daguerrean artist Ezra Greenleaf Weld, brother of Theodore Weld, one of the leading abolitionists. An image by E.G. Weld is in the collections of the Madison County Historical Society and among the most important images of early photography (a contemporary copy of the Weld image is in the Getty Museum.)

Haudenosaunee connection – Sally Roesch Wagner & Phil Arnold

♦ Folded into this story is that of Native women whose political power and social status in the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (Onondaga Nation) helped convince Gage and her contemporaries that women’s subordination was neither natural nor ordained by God.

♦ In the mid-17th century, the French sent an expedition down from Canada to the shores of Onondaga Lake to establish a mission, called “Sainte Marie de Gannentaha.”

♦ The mission lasted less than two years before peace with the local indigenous group, the Haudenosaunee, became too tenuous and the French Fort, as it was later called, was abandoned.

♦ A reproduction of the mission was built in 1933 as part of a massive public works program, and in 1975 Onondaga County Parks and Recreation started a Living History program at the site.

♦ The Skä•noñh – Great Law of Peace Center is a Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Heritage Center focused on telling the story of the native peoples of central New York.

♦ The history is told through the lens of the Onondaga Nation and covers topics such as Creation, European Contact, The Great Law of Peace, and more.

♦ The Onondagas, or People of the Hills, are the keepers of the Central Fire and are the spiritual and political center of the Haudenosaune.

Skä•noñh, is an Onondaga welcoming greeting meaning “Peace and Wellness.”

Political Powers of Haudenosaunee Women

• One of most influential groups for Gage’s social justice movement

• (1893) Gage was adopted into Mohawk Wolf Clan, given the name: Ka-ron-ien-ha-wi, or “Sky Carrier”

• Gage arrested for illegally voting for CNY school board election

• (1920) 19th Amendment

• Haudenosaunee women: great political powers

• Chief selection, participation in major decisions, veto war acts, disqualifying/removing chief from office

• If guilty of either: murder, theft, sexual assault banished, scarred, capital punishment

Importance of the Land

• Women’s authority land and food sources

• Ex. Corn, beans, and squash = staple food – by ‘interplanting’ each grow better

• Three Sisters story, cultural significance

• Physical, spiritual embodiment of life sustainers

• Corn, beans, squash sprouted from Sky Woman’s daughter

• Creation story: Sky Woman fell from Sky World, Turtle Island

L. Frank Baum (1856-1919) Wizard of Oz

• Matilda’s son-in-law, American author, actor

• Wagner: “Matilda’s feminist politics channeled into Oz books”

• Wonderful Mother of Oz

• Matilda became a “spiritual mentor” for Baum: “One wizard for every 10,000 witches” (with regards to heresy and witchcraft, Women, Church and State)

• Close contact with other feminists: Anthony, Women’s Suffrage Club

• Marvelous Land of Oz: General leads girls/women of Oz in revolt against men female advocating for gender equality placed on throne

SOCIAL JUSTICE ISSUES OF TODAY

• Example modern organization: NOW (National Org. for Women, est. 1966)

1. Reproductive rights and justice

2. Ending violence against women

3. Economic justice

4. LGBTQ rights

5. Racial justice

6. Constitutional Equality

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION: An opera tells a story with a central theme, often in a particular time period, which of course can be updated or re-interpreted by directors in future productions.

Is there a historical figure you would like to tell a story about

What style of music would you use

What would the through-line be

Which characters would sing solos/arias, and which duets or trios

How important are a set, video, projections, and costumes to your concept

If they are important, create a model, costume sketches, which can be done with

drawings or collage from photos or magazines

Present your idea to a producer (the teacher or the class)

PROJECTS:

● Research two women involved with the woman suffrage movement & discuss their contribution to the struggle for the right to vote. You may choose writers, musicians or visual artists.

● Trace the evolving terminology used for blacks/African Americans during the 19th century

● Which characters in this opera have had operas or musicals written about them?

● What Presidents or other high-ranking government officials have had operas or musicals written about them

● Why do you think High School history textbooks are omitting Native American history? Has this always been the case? What do you think students could benefit from learning about Native American history?

● Why doesn’t Matilda Joslyn Gage appear in historical texts? Is it because of her Woman, Church & State in which she protests the repression or abuse of women by both church & state? Or is it because of other reasons?

Sources/References:

Don Little & Sean Martin for history – Gerritt Smith letter to Henry Clay M. Fergus Bordewich: Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America. Amistad, 2005. p. 333 Penny Colman: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony: A Friendship that Changed the World Norman K. Dann PhD Cousins of Reform: Gerrit Smith and Elizabeth C. Stanton. (showing the influence of Peterboro on Elizabeth Cady Stanton) Norman K. Dann: When We Get to Heaven – Runaway Slaves on the Road to Peterboro Log Cabin Books, Hamilton, NY www.logcabinbooks.us "The Jerry Rescue". New York History Net, 2009. Retrieved August 15, 2009.

National Abolition Hall Of Fame and Museum (NAHOF); 5255 Pleasant Valley Rd, PO Box 55, Peterboro, NY 13134

• Open for 2017 Season May 20th - September 24th • Saturday and Sunday 1-5pm

Haudenosaunee women led way on voting rights: Suffragist Gage got a taste of decision-making as an honorary member of Council of Matrons Jessica Nordell - Special to The Washington Post “In 1893, Matilda Joslyn Gage - firebrand, women's rights activist and co-founder of the National Woman Suffrage Association - was arrested for trying to vote in a school board election Upstate New York. Voting while female was illegal, and Gage went to trial. That same year, Gage was honorarily adopted into the Wolf Clan of the Mohawk Nation of the Iroquois. This meant that she would join the Council of Matrons, a decision-making body. She would have a say in who became chief. She would, in other words, have a vote.”