A Note from the Chairman – June 2022
One of the works included in the orchestral concert given by the Durham University Orchestral Society during their Stanford Weekend concert in Durham Cathedral on Saturday March 5th 2022, was the Overture to The Wreckers, an opera by Dame Ethel Smyth.
Ethel Smyth attended the Leipzig Conservatoire and studied composition with Stanford’s teacher there, Carl Reinecke. She also studied privately in Leipzig with Henrich von Herzogenburg. During her time in Leipzig she met Grieg, Dvorak and Tchaikovsky and later Brahms and Clara Schuman. She carved out a successful career as a composer and was the first woman to have an opera (Der Wald) staged at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York in 1903, and Covent Garden (The Wreckers in 1910. In 1928, she was also the first woman to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.
I recently attended a performance of The Wreckers during this season’s Glyndebourne Festival. This was the first opera by a woman composer to be given at Glyndebourne and the first professional performance of the Wreckers in the UK for more than eighty years.
The Glyndebourne production was the opera’s premier in its original French libretto. Glyndebourne’s music staff went back to a manuscript full French score in a copyist’s hand from the British Library to produce a performing edition. This restored almost thirty minutes of music cut before the work’s premier. The opera had been premiered in German in Leipzig on 11th, November 1906. It was subsequently presented in English at Covent Garden by Beecham in 1909.
The Wreckers was given a semi-staged performance at the Proms on July 31st 1994 and a recording has been released of this, initially on the Conifer Label and rereleased in 2018, by Retrospect Opera.
Glyndebourne presented a strong production of the work with innovative staging, an excellent cast and chorus and the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Glyndebourne’s Music Director, Robin Ticciati, on top form. This is a powerful melodic three act work with many familiar musical influences and Glyndebourne certainly made a strong case for the opera. The chorus plays an important part in the action and has plenty of singing to do.
This production will be available from Glyndebourne on demand, on video in due course, and will be performed in a concert version at the Proms on July 25th, 2022. Houston Opera has also announced that an English version of the Wreckers will be included in its Fall 2022 season.
Dame Ethel received an Honorary Doctorate in Music from Durham University and a statute of her conducting was unveiled in Working, England in March, 2022.
If you enjoy opera, don’t miss The Wreckers. You will not be disappointed.
