From Tulip To Orchid (With Love)

‘To my dearest, with all my heart’ signs the man, finishing a love poem to the woman he loves. But is this truly as simple as it seems? Inspired by the work and lives of Michael Field (Birmingham poets Katherine Harris Bradley and Edith Emma Cooper), Anne Lister (known as Gentleman Jack), George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) and more, this new short opera explores and celebrates the coded ways in which LGBTQIA+ people celebrated and expressed their love in print and private during the Victorian era.