Catherine the Great, Librettist

Catherine the Great is famous for many things. But one of her lesser-known areas of interest was opera. And she loved it as both audience and creator. She wrote a number of operas during her reign, many of which were comedic.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm tre C V Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. We
have a sponsored episode today. This episode is being sponsored
by Hulu and their new series The Great, which comes

(00:24):
out on So. The Great is a not exactly historical
series about Catherine the Great, that is somebody who previous
hosts Katie and Sarah did a three part series on
back in August. Even at three parts, though, there are
so many other things that we could talk about with
Katherine the Great, and so we had tons and tons

(00:45):
of ideas. When Hulu asked us about sponsoring the show.
We wanted to choose something that was more towards the
fun end of the spectrum, because The Greats tone is
pretty satirical and comedic. Uh So, something else that is
often comedic was the operas that Catherine the Great route,
and that is what we're going to talk about today.

(01:07):
We don't want to repeat too much of what is
already in the archive, but we do want to give
folks a quick refresher on who Catherine the Great was,
just so you have some context. In seventeen twenty nine.
She was born Sophie Frederica Auguste, a princess from Prussia,
and when she was fourteen, she was selected to marry
the man who would become Russian Emperor, Peter the Third.

(01:29):
After arriving in Russia and converting to Russian Orthodoxy, Sophie
became known as Katerina, which is anglicized as Katherine. Catherine's
marriage to Peter did not go well. He was virtually
her opposite, stubborn, rebellious, amateur, uncultured and ill mannered, without
the aptitude or temperament to be a good emperor, and

(01:50):
he also humiliated her in public. They both had affairs,
and it's possible that he did not father any of
her children. Nearly all of their eighteen year marriage took
place before Peter became emperor, and during that time he
increasingly showed himself to be incapable of ruling. Then Empress Elizabeth,

(02:11):
who was Peter's aunt, died on December seventeen sixty one,
that's in the old style calendar, that would be January
five of seventeen sixty two under the new style, and
with that Peter finally ascended to the throne. He did
not stay there long, though. Less than six months later,
he was overthrown in a coup that Catherine had helped orchestrate,

(02:35):
and he was assassinated a few days after that. Katherine
took his place, becoming Empress Catherine the Second, and she
reigned for thirty four years. That made her Russia's longest
ruling female monarch. Following the Enlightenment ideal of the enlightened despot,
Catherine planned to modernize and reform the government, cultivate the

(02:55):
sciences and the arts, and improve the lives of Russia's
poorest people. She wanted to update the criminal code and
overhaul the justice system. She established Russia's first school for girls,
appointed its first professor of Russian law, and established a
society to translate great works of foreign literature into Russian

(03:16):
Russia also expanded its industry, trade, and infrastructure under Catherine's rule,
but a lot of Catherine's attempts at reforms fell very
far short. During her reign, Russia was politically pretty stable,
but frequently at war. She annexed most of Ukraine and
took control of part of Poland after an uprising in

(03:36):
seventeen That, of course, expanded the Russian Empire, but it
didn't necessarily help the people who had just been annexed,
and although she had planned to emancipate Russia's serfs, by
the end of her reign, serfdom was actually more widespread,
and in a lot of cases people were living in
worse conditions than they had before. This was especially true

(03:59):
in ukrain Raine, where the peasant class lost a lot
of the freedoms that it had previously enjoyed. It took
almost two hundred years for Catherine and her rule to
start to get an honest historical reckoning. For decades, people
instead focused on her twelve documented lovers, who were spread
out over forty four years, and on salacious rumors about

(04:21):
her love life. Or they wrote her off as a
conniving German interloper from an insignificant family who schemed her
way onto the Russian throne. Or they dismissed her as vain,
as a frivolous woman who was more focused on the courts,
theatrical pomp and splendor than un ruling. Even though she
and Peter the Great had some similar ambitions, his were

(04:42):
praised as groundbreaking and innovative, while hers were disparaged as
derivative and ineffective. There were certainly people who tried to
glorify Katherine's time as an empress, but she also had
a lot of very vocal detractors. Katherine was not the
only Russian empress whose leg see was treated this way.
Women ruled Russia for most of the eighteenth century. Between

(05:06):
seventeen twenty five and seventeen nineties, six four empresses were
on the throne, with really very little interruption between them.
But that stretch of empresses was book ended by a
society that was far more patriarchal. Before the eighteenth century,
Russia's royal and aristocratic women had been sequestered away from
the public and specifically from men, in almost monastic buildings

(05:29):
and palace wings called terrems, and after Catherine's death, Russia's
law of succession was changed to keep women off of
the throne, including specifically keeping the emperor's wife out of
the line of succession. Between Catherine the Great's death and
the Russian Revolution, the Russian monarchy and society as a
whole really tried to downplay the contributions of all four

(05:52):
of these eighteenth century empresses. I mean, it was like
these women had been in charge for roughly seventy five years.
Some people wanted to kind of sidestep that whole idea,
and those downplayed contributions by these women included their fostering
of the arts, which is what brings us back to opera.
Various members of the Russian aristocracy started theater troops in

(06:15):
the first half of the eighteenth century. The monarchy started
to be more formally involved under Empress Elizabeth, who came
to the throne in seventeen forty one, and in many ways,
Elizabeth's reign paved the way for Catherine's, both in terms
of her rule and her focus on the arts. In general.
The Imperial court was also very theatrical, with state ceremonies

(06:37):
and dinners and similar events involving a whole lot of spectacle,
and with monarchs regularly hosting events like masquerades, staged equestrian tournaments, concerts, recitations, ballets,
and theatrical productions. Catherine the Second's interest in culture and
the arts started long before she became empress, and it
extended well beyond her work in opera. Catherine just enjoyed writing.

(07:02):
She was quoted as saying, quote, I cannot see a
blank sheet of paper without wanting to write on it.
And her written work included literary journals, fairy tales, conduct manuals,
treatises on how to raise children, and an ABC book.
She also wrote a series of non opera dramatic works
in the seventeen seventies and seventeen eighties. Some of Catherine's

(07:24):
plays were written after the style of William Shakespeare, who
really was not all that well known in Russia. Yet.
One such work, whose title translated to how to Have
both the Linen and the Basket, was based on The
Merry Wives of Windsor. I love that title a whole lot.

(07:45):
Catherine was also interested in incorporating Western European influences into
Russian culture. She brought composers from Italy and Spain to
the Russian court, and some of them composed music for
her operas. She was particularly interested in French literature for
plosophy and art. She kept up a correspondence with Voltaire
that lasted from seventeen sixty three until his death in

(08:06):
seventeen seventy eight. She also bought Denis de de Rou's
library and she hired him as a librarian. She had
a relationship with Baron Friedrich Melchior Grimm, who was originally
from Germany but started a French cultural newsletter and was
a huge proponent of French culture. Catherine's affinity for French literature, philosophy,
and culture was not universal, though she was not as

(08:30):
fond of Russo because she found some of his work
to be anti Russian, while she really really loved more
Western European culture and art. Catherine has also been described
as more Russian than the Russians. She wanted the Russian
arts to be Russian, not simply to be imitations of
foreign work. So while she was drawing from European influences,

(08:52):
she was also writing in Russian and working with Russian
playwrights and composers. She incorporated Russian idiot ms and colloquialisms
into her work. She also wrote specifically about Russia, including
grounding her plays and stories and operas in Russian history
and folklore. Catherine's work as a librettist really drew on

(09:13):
her love of Russia and her desire to create an
authentic Russian style of opera and theater. And we're gonna
start getting deeper into that after we have a little
sponsor break. Katherine the Second was crowned Empress of Russia
in seventeen sixty two. In seventeen sixty three, she had

(09:36):
an opera house built at the Winter Palace. Then in
the seventeen eighties she replaced that opera house with the
Hermitage Theater. She also founded the Imperial Theatrical School in
seventeen seventy nine. Opera in particular, became the theatrical genre
of the Imperial court. Her fostering of theater and culture
went beyond these more formal activities. She also encouraged whole

(10:00):
of the Russian aristocracy to become patrons of the arts.
If you were part of the wealthy elite, it was
expected that you would commission works of art, hire music
tutors for your children, and produce creative works of art yourself.
There were, of course, people who thought all this emphasis
on theater and the arts was really excessive, and that
it showed that the Empress was too focused on the

(10:22):
trappings of luxury. But Catherine really saw all of this
as an opportunity to shape Russia as an empire. As
the monarch, she had the ability to influence or even
dictate Russian culture, and she could use that ability to
influence how people both within and outside of Russia regarded
Russia itself and her as the Empress. In other words,

(10:44):
she was using theater to create an image of herself
as monarch and of Russia as an empire to present
to the rest of the world. Some of this was
about Russia's place among the nations. If Russia was producing
great works of art, literature, music, and theater, and that
was evidence that it was equal to the great powers
of Europe. But it was also about educating the Russian people.

(11:07):
Eighteenth century Russian theater was really didactic. Stories often had
a very clear moral Heroic characters overcame obstacles and demonstrated
admirable qualities like bravery, modesty, and generosity. Bad behavior, on
the other hand, was satirized and mocked. So Catherine's stories
and plays and operas also were reinforcing ideas of what

(11:30):
a monarch should be and how the people should view
the monarch. Some of this was to reinforce how people
should treat her as the Empress. It was kind of
her own pr machine, but it was also about paving
the way for her son and presumed air Pavel Petrovitch
anglicized as Paul. She was creating works that would illustrate

(11:51):
how a prince should behave and how a prince should
be treated, for him and for her other descendants. Catherine's
opera skaskas or opera tails fit right into this. Skoska
is a Russian word for story, but it is also
often used to mean a fairy tale, and these were
comic operas with both sung and spoken dialogue, along with

(12:12):
dances and musical interludes. Most of them played for the
aristocracy at the Hermitage Theater and for the public at St.
Petersburg's Comedy Theater. These were lighter works, They had happy endings,
and they often wrapped up with the main character getting married.
Katherine thought of the opera skotska as a distinctly Russian

(12:32):
form of opera, equal to comic opera forms in Italy, France,
and Germany. Katherine wrote the librettos for these opera scoskas,
although she didn't write verse, so she left the poems
and the song lyrics to her collaborators. She was still
really involved in this part of the libretto, though she
usually had a direction in mind for the songs and

(12:53):
the musical themes, and she personally selected the composers and
the lyricists and then worked with them to carry that
direction when it came to producing the performance. She also
had an active hand in the costumes and the sets
and the direction. A lot of times she went to
multiple rehearsals and gave the actor's notes. Wouldn't everyone want

(13:13):
to get notes from the Empress? That sounds terrifying. I mean,
like I did theater in high school. I studied it
in college. It was my major, and getting notes from
anybody was excreciating. The idea of getting notes from the
ruler of the country. Oh h. During her lifetime, Catherine

(13:36):
was not often credited by name when the opera was
performed or when it's libretto was published, but especially when
it came to the performances for the Aristocracy at the
Hermitage Theater, people generally knew that they were watching something
that the Empress had written, so chronologically by when they
were staged. Katherine's four opera skoskas were five e Bolslavich,

(13:58):
Champion of Novgorod, The Brave and Bold Night, a Critic,
and the Woebegone Hero Kasametovic. These were performed for the
first time between seventeen eighty six and seventeen eighty nine.
All four of them tell the story of a teenage
prince who grows and matures over the course of the opera,
and two of them, the princess mother is a widow

(14:20):
who's raising him alone. And in general, the female characters
and each of these operas are all women and girls
who support the prince somehow, so they're the mothers, the
sisters that nurses, the nanny's and the prince's eventual bride.
Feavy was first staged in April of seventeen eighty six,
and it was based on an earlier skuzka that Catherine
had written, called The Tale of Prince Klore, which was

(14:43):
printed in English as Ivan Serrevich or The Rose without
Prickles that Stings. Not another great title, It tells the
story of a prince who is not allowed to travel
until he has shown that he has the right traits
to rule the country, traits like modest generosity, obedience, and boldness.

(15:03):
To make sure the opera's use of Russian colloquialisms and
folk tales rang true, Catherine got her servant Christian Brazinski
to review it. Count Valentine estra Hazy, who was the
French ambassador to the Russian court, wrote to his wife
about seeing a later staging of this opera at the
Hermitage Theater, saying quote, I have never seen a spectacle

(15:24):
more varied nor more magnificent. There were more than five
hundred people on stage, while there were hardly fifty of
us spectators, even though the little Grand Dukes and the
four little Grand Duchesses were there with their governors and governesses.
So exclusive is the Empress in granting admission to her hermitage.

(15:44):
Both Leovich Champion of Novgora debut at the Hermitage Theater
in November of six It was adapted from a story
in Levshan's Russian folk Tales. This was a collection of
Russian fairy tales, but like many early collections of Russian tales,
it is not clear how many were folk tales, how
many were adaptations, and how many were just popular stories.

(16:06):
Boslovich Champion of Novgorod follows the general structure of a
Russian epic poem or by Lena. The Brave and Bold
Night A critic was first staged in September of seventeen seven,
and this one is really rooted in Russian fairy tales
and folklore. It features a lot of more magical elements
like Lacy's or wood goblins Bobby yagas in there. There's

(16:29):
a flying carpet and a tablecloth that magically produces a
meal and servants to attend it when it's unfolded. There
are other magical items in this one as well. The
hero of this one is Russian folk character Ivan Saravitch,
who has to save his sisters from all kinds of
fairy tale peril that sounds borderline Miyazaki um in and

(16:51):
lastly the woebegone hero. Because Metovitch was a very silly satire.
It was first staged in January of seventeen eighty nine.
It's target is widely interpreted as Sweden's King Gustav the Third.
It made its debut during the Russo Swedish War of
seventeen to seventeen nineteen, and it was pulled from their
repertoire at the Hermitage Theater after the war was over.

(17:14):
This isn't the only reason that it's interpreted as being
about Gustav. Katherine and Gustav were cousins, and the similarities
were strong enough that Katherine's adviser, Gregory Potempken, advised her
that the show might annoy Gustav and prolong the war.
The music for this one was by Spanish composer Vicente
Marte Soelaer, who was very famous in his day, but

(17:36):
also didn't speak Russian, so in addition to the show's
really satirical tone, there was something of a disconnect between
the music and the lyrics. According to one of the
books that I read when I was working on this,
Katherine does not seem to have really mind that like
sort of disconnect, because he was really really famous and
she was glad to have him working on the show.
I think for a comic opera might actually also be

(17:58):
a little fantastic to have things slightly offbeat and not
quite matched up, having like a musical tone that doesn't
quite match what the dialogue is saying. It would almost
be hard to do if you tried to do it
without it involving people that really are not from the
same culture or language background. These four opera skazkas had

(18:19):
a lot in common, but they also fell into four
different genres. Favy was a morality tale, The Brave and
Bold Night a critic was a magical tale. Both Leovich
Champion of Novgorod was a heroic epic, and the Woebegone
hero Kausa Metovich was a satire. In the decades that followed,
each of these evolved into their own genres, with their

(18:40):
own standards and tropes within the Russian theater and opera.
So these were all comic operas, but the nine operas
that Katherine penned included some more serious work as well.
We'll get to more on that after a sponsor break. So,

(19:01):
as we mentioned a moment ago, the operas that we
talked about before the break, we're all comic operas, generally light,
often very fanciful, with happy endings, usually with the wedding.
But Catherine also wrote librettos for operas that were closer
to opera siria. So that's the Italian opera style that
developed in the late seventeenth century. As its name suggests,

(19:23):
opera siria tempts to follow a more serious heroic or
epic theme. Catherine's most notable work along these lines was
the Early Reign of a Leg which was situated roughly
between opera syria traditions that had been imported to Russia
from Italy and Russian heroic operas that developed in the

(19:43):
nineteenth century. The Early Reign of a Leg was really
the middle installment of a trilogy, but it was the
only one of the three to be staged as an opera.
As was the case with some of the operas that
we talked about earlier, it wasn't specifically credited as Catherine's
work when it was first perform Instead, the script described
it as quote an imitation of Shakespeare, not observing customary

(20:06):
theatrical laws. The Early Reign of a Leg is a
five act opera covering some of the same historical material
that we talked about in our episode on Olga of Kiev.
It's drawn from the Russian Primary chronicles account of the Roosts,
including the reigns of Princes Oleg and Igor, the founding
of Moscow, the interplay between Christianity and Paganism, and conflicts

(20:29):
between the roots and the Byzantine Empire and Constantinople. So
there was a nationalist element in this choice of subject matter.
The name Russia comes from russ and this was an
opera that essentially glorified early Russian history. In some ways,
a Leg was a stand in for Katherine as an emperor,
but this opera also had direct parallels to Katherine's hopes

(20:51):
for Russia. Her so called Greek Project proposed for Russia
to annex the eastern part of the Ottoman Empire and
revived the former Scantine Empire with Catherine's grandson Constantine on
the throne in Constantinople. There were several parallels to this
idea in the early Reign of a Leg, including a
Leg's defeat of Constantinople through a show of force and

(21:14):
a play within a play drawn from Euripides is Alcestis.
The music in the early Reign of a Leg was
the work of a team of Italian and Russian composers.
It again drew from Russian folk songs, with many of
its musical numbers being inspired by a collection of folks
songs by Nikolay Levov and Ivan Proc that first came

(21:36):
out in seventeen nine. The Levov proc collection of folk
songs had some of the same challenges as other eighteenth
century Russian folk song collections we mentioned earlier, as far
as basically how to categorize the songs and whether all
of them were truly folk songs. Even so, this collection,
which had about a hundred songs and its first printing,

(21:58):
became hugely influential to Russian composers like Migael Glinka and
Modest Missourski, as well as composers from outside Russia, including
Levig von Beethoven. Catherine started working on The Early Reign
of a Leg in seventeen eighty six, but not long
after that she had to put it aside. Russia went
to war with Turkey in seventeen eighty seven and then

(22:20):
with Sweden in sevent so Catherine had other things to
focus on, and she also recognized that the opera's themes
would have more impact if they were staged after a
Russian victory, or at least when victory seemed likely. When
The Early Reign of a Leg was staged in the
fall of seventeen ninety, Russia had signed a peace treaty
with Sweden and had won a series of battles in

(22:42):
the war with Turkey, which seemed to be coming to
a close. It was staged for a second time in
seventeen and it's libretto was published in multiple editions. People
who have studied this opera, and more recent decades have
pointed out a lot of parallels between the opera and
throne's objectives and policies. It's really deeply connected to Russian

(23:04):
identity and politics, and one of its themes was that
Russia had been a great empire that could be restored
to greatness. Like Katherine's comedic work that we talked about earlier,
the Early Reign of a leg was definitely something that
she wrote for a specific purpose. It's a really good
example of how Catherine shows exactly when and how to

(23:25):
stage her operas when she wanted them to have a
particular impact. Catherine's influence on the development of Russian opera
wasn't confined to just the five specific works we've talked
about today. She wrote other works as well, including, as
we've mentioned, nine total operas and various other plays ranging
from one to five acts. But beyond that, she also

(23:47):
strongly encouraged the aristocracy, as we said, the commission and
stage works of their own. Thanks to the ongoing advocacy
of Catherine and Russia's other eighteenth century monarchs, at least
a hundred and fifty Russian comic operas were written in
the seventeen hundreds. Collectively, these works established Russian folk songs
as a major source of musical influence for Russian composers.

(24:11):
They also laid the groundwork for combining Western musical and
theater traditions with Russian culture, and they established a number
of common themes and tropes and Russian comic opera, including
peasants and merchants as characters, monarchs masquerading as peasants and
vice versa, and comic operas that ended with a big,
elaborate wedding. As a more serious opera, the early Reign

(24:33):
of a leg was also one of the precursors to
the Russian tradition of nationalist historic opera. It also combined
European and Russian musical traditions with a focus on Russian history.
Catherine's comic and serious operas and the standards that they
helped set in the eighteenth century really helped build the
foundation for the Golden Age of Russian opera that was

(24:55):
really more in the nineteenth century. In the eighteen twenties
and thirties, when various composers were describing their own work
as Russia's first opera, for the most part, they were
talking about compositions that had a lot in common with
what Katherine and others had been doing at least fifty
years earlier. These nineteenth century first operas in quotation marks

(25:17):
also combined Russian folk music and elements of Russian history,
are folk tales, and influence from both Russian and European
music and theater, just like Catherine had done. This idea
that nineteenth century composers wrote Russia's first operas has persisted
until today. For example, a two thousand four encyclopedia of

(25:39):
Russian History that was part of the background reading that
Tracy did for this episode described Mikhail Ginka's A Life
for the Czar, which came out in eighteen thirty six,
is the first Russian national opera. It cited the works
retelling of Russian history with a libretto in Russian and
a musical style that combined European techniques with Russian melodies.

(26:00):
Even though the early reign of a leg had done
all of those same things, nineteenth century composers definitely developed
and standardized Russian music and opera. That happened, for sure.
A group of composers known as the Mighty Five intentionally
set out to create a national school of Russian music,
one that was uniquely and distinctly Russian. The Mighty Five

(26:24):
included people like Modeskue Mazurski, and Nikolay Rinsky Korsakov. Other
famous Russian composers of this same Golden Age era included
Petore Iliot Chakovsky, and these and other people, mostly men,
unquestionably produced musical masterpieces during this time, but a lot
of the writing of that time made it seem as

(26:46):
though these nineteenth century composers did it all from scratch,
rather than building on the eighteenth century work that was
developed and propagated thanks in large part to Catherine the Great.
Like they had a quick meeting and said, we got
to write musical masterpieces. You guys, you know what we're
gonna do. We're gonna invent Russian opera from scratch. A

(27:07):
big reason for this erasure is that after Catherine's death,
her opera legacy was treated much the same way her
legacy as empress had been. When her son Paul became emperor,
he intentionally rolled back a lot of her reforms and
otherwise tried to erase her legacy. He was also the
one who implemented the law of succession that we talked

(27:28):
about earlier, which would have kept Catherine off the throne
if it had been in place when she lived. It
was also Paul who decided to exhume the remains of
Peter the Third, crown them, and have Catherine's body lie
in state next to them, with Catherine specifically not crowned,
before then burying them side by side. Yeah, there was

(27:49):
as much effort as possible to undo what she had done,
and the treatment of her literary legacy was really similar
to the treatment of her legacy as ruler. Paul and
his successor destroyed Katherine's manuscripts and memoirs, although a lot
of them survived thanks to copies that were in other
people's possession. They also banned her courtiers and associates from

(28:10):
publishing their own journals and memoirs. Government censors refused to
allow biographical material about Catherine to be published, both to
keep her from overshadowing her successors and to keep her
reputation from tarnishing theirs. There was just an intentional effort
to minimize her legacy overall as a writer and as
a Lorettist. And to be clear, Katherine was not a composer.

(28:33):
She worked with composers to create the musical elements of
her operas, but the traits that came to be regarded
as hallmarks of the Golden Age of Russian opera were
all things that she intentionally put into her own work
and encouraged others to do in the second half of
the seventeen hundreds. It's possible that if Catherine had focused
her own efforts differently in the eighteenth century, or if

(28:55):
she hadn't cared about opera at all, Russian opera could
have evolved quite differently. Yeah, what would it have been
like if she just didn't have any of those Russian
folk tales and fairy tales as part of so many
comic operas. Uh, I would need to learn a lot
more about Like I would need to be a sort
of total Russian opera expert, which I am not to

(29:18):
really speculate on that what you're not. I do love Chakowski,
but that's more on the ballet end of things. Uh.
Are you are you an expert on listener mail? I
have some listener mail. Uh. When I read this listener mail,
I got choked up, and then I decided to do
something that choked me up more. So we're gonna see

(29:38):
how this goes all right, Um, this is from Becky.
Becky says dear Tracy and Holly. Hi, I hope that
you and yours are doing okay in these scary times. Um.
We're recording this on Aprie. It is still scary. Thank
you for all of the hard work that you've been doing.
Keep to keep making podcasts. I've really been enjoying the

(29:58):
Offbeat History episode as well as all the behind scenes
commentary and you'r April third episode. You mentioned that you
wanted to do a story on Emily Dickinson and that
you wanted to visit Amherst and see it all the
places where she lived and worked. I lived near Amherston.
A few years ago I found her grave in the
old town Cemetery. The top of her gravestone was covered
with flowers and stones that people had left for her.

(30:21):
A few people left pens and pencils on her grave too,
which I found very moving. What had the biggest impact
on me, though, was that one person had copied out
the poem hope is the thing with feathers and wrote
at the end, thank you. It was really beautiful to
see all of these tangible markers of how much her
poetry meant to people, and I hope that you get

(30:41):
to see it too, someday in the future when we
can all travel again. Untill then, take care and stay safe, Becky.
The reason that I'm so moved by this email is
because that poem is very moving, and I felt like
it would be a very good thing to read in
these times that we're in, and it is Emily Dickinson's
Hope is the thing with others. Hope is the thing

(31:02):
with feathers that purchases in the soul and sings the
tune without the words and never stops at all, and
sweetest in the gale is heard and sore. Must be
the storm that could abashed the little bird that kept
so many warm. I've heard it in the chilliest land
and on the strangest see and never an extremity. It
asked a crumb of me. I did that in one take.

(31:27):
I was ready. I was standing by in case. Uh.
For whatever reason, UM, yesterday was just one of the
harder psychological days of UM. All of our sheltering in
place and whatnot that we've been doing so far, UM,
and so when I got when I was reading through
email UM to find a listener mail Uh yesterday this

(31:48):
UM really got to me. And then when I was
like I should read that poem, that really got to me.
But I felt like it's just obviously such a hopeful
poem to be reading right now. Hopefully when we do
q A on this episode, I don't realize that I
skipped a word and have to do it over again. UM.
So thank you so much Becky for your note. Hope

(32:12):
everyone is taking care of themselves as as much as
they possibly can UM. At this point, this episode is
coming out on May six. I know some places have
talked about their reopening between now and then. Fingers crossed,
we're all being as safe as possible. UM. If you'd

(32:33):
like to write to us at History Podcast at I
heart radio dot com, and then we're all over social
media app miss in History. That's where you find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest,
and Instagram. UM. You can also subscribe to our show
on Apple podcast and the iHeart radio app and anywhere
else get your podcasts. Stuff you missed in History Class

(32:56):
is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
from heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows h m
hm