On Sunday, May 6, 2007 at 3:15:20 AM UTC-7, alanwa...@aol.com wrote:

Dame Ethel Smyth's opera The Wreckers is to be performed at the State
Theatre Giessen on May 20 in what is billed as a new production. The conductor is Carlos Spierer and there are two further performances
planned for June.
My guess is that this is the first fully professional opera house
performance of The Wreckers for many, many years. Cornwall opera
staged an acclaimed performance last year with a mix of professional, semi-pro and students and with a very reduced orchestra.
Details of that and a synopsis can be found here:
http://tinyurl.com/ynrbak
Mr Spierer and the house obviously like investigating less usual works
as the 2006-7 season also included two works by Peter Maxwell-Davies
and performances of Il Giuramento by Mercadante.
The Wreckers was written between 1902-4 and is the strongest of her
operas in my opinion. I have never heard a performance although I
have read the score. Orchestrally she is obviously influenced by
Wagner, although not slavishly so, and much less so in the vocal
writing. The strongest Acts are the last two (again an opinion based
on reading it on the page, which is not always the same as hearing
it).
The first two performances were conducted by Thomas Beecham and Bruno
Walter. Beecham promised Dame Ethel between the Wars that he would
revive it but reneged on that for whatever reason and had to endure
the wrath of the formidable Dame Ethel, shutting himself in a cupboard
on one occasion while leaving his Secretary to deal with her arrival.
The powerful Overture has had occasional outings and was in the
repertoire of the late Sir Alexander Gibson who recorded it.
Dame Ethel died in 1944, her last years plagued by deafness. There
are arguments that The Wreckers is her greatest achievement although
some would place her Mass in D Major ahead of it. In either case, she
was certainly an accomplished writer for vocal forces. Sir Adrian
Boult revived the Mass in a BBC broadcast performance and later
regretted not performing more of her music although he did record some
short pieces in the 78 era.
I organised the first broadcast performance of her Concerto for
Violin, Horn and Orchestra which makes considerable demands on both
soloists and which was given by the Philomusica of London. We
attempted to get it recorded but no company was interested. It has subsequently been recorded much more recently for the Chandos label if
any are interested in exploring it.
Kind regards,
Alan M. Watkins

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220720-ethel-smyththe-rebel-composer-erased-from-history

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