In an age of repression, she told women sex could be ‘absolutely marvellous’. Why is the great sexologist being played by a man in Dear Marie Stopes?
‘I can’t do the gonorrhoea duet,” says the soprano Alexa Mason, rehearsing on the elegant arts and craft steps of the library at London’s Wellcome Collection.
“Why not?” asks the composer Alex Mills. “Well, it’s a duet.” The contralto, Jess Dandy, hasn’t yet arrived. Mason launches instead into a song of supernatural poignance, melodic but otherworldly, narratively urgent but poetically impressionistic. Nina Brazier, an established opera director based in Frankfurt (which is where all the best ones are based), appraises it all coolly, but those of us who’ve never seen it are instantly welling up.
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