Page 237 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained

MODERN 1900–1950 235

See also: La traviata 174–175 ■ The Ring Cycle 180–187 ■ Tosca 194–197 ■ Peer Gynt 208–209 ■ Peter Grimes 288–293 ■
L’Amour de loin 325 ■ blue cathedral 326

by the opera but sympathized winning wide recognition, though make their living by luring ships
with the composer, writing later: it was still difficult to get the work onto the rocky shore and plundering
“knowing what I do about the staged in her own country. For the them. The drama of the opera
difficulties of opera composers, British, opera was chiefly an upper- centers on two lovers, Thirza and
especially plus the handicap of class entertainment put on by Mark, who are opposed to this
sex, the astonishing fact about foreigners in London during the thievery. Thirza is the young wife
it was that it existed at all.” social season. When Smyth first of Pascoe, leader of the wreckers
By then Smyth had embarked submitted The Wreckers to the but also the village preacher—a
on her own career as an opera Royal Opera House in Covent dual role not at all incongruous to
composer. Crucial encouragement Garden, the managing committee most of the villagers, who see no
had come from the German told her: “To announce a new work contradiction between their ❯❯
conductor and Wagner champion by a new composer is to secure an
Hermann Levi, a friend for whom absolutely empty house, and in
Smyth had played on the piano future no opera will be produced
one of her earlier choral works, here that has not established its
Mass in D (1891). Impressed by the success abroad.”
drama of the music, Levi told her:
“You must at once sit down and A Cornish tale
write an opera.” Completed in 1904 and first
Taking up the challenge, in 1894 performed two years later in
Smyth completed her first opera, a Leipzig, The Wreckers is set in
comedy called Fantasio, staged in a remote village on the coast of
Weimar in 1898. Her second, Der Cornwall in the late 18th century.
Wald (The Forest), was produced The villagers are “wreckers,” who
in Berlin and London in 1902 and
a year later at the Metropolitan
Opera in New York—the first opera Two composer sisters, Nadia (left)
and Lili Boulanger, pose together in
by a woman to be performed there. 1913. Nadia was also an influential
By the time Smyth wrote The teacher, whose students included
Wreckers, her third opera, she was Aaron Copland and Philip Glass.

Ethel Smyth The daughter of a French mother campaigner Emmeline
and a British major-general, Ethel Pankhurst (possibly a lover of
Smyth was born in the English the openly lesbian composer)
county of Kent in 1858. At the and devoted the next two years
age of 19, she went to Germany to the Suffragette cause. In later
to study music at Leipzig years, she was hampered by
Conservatory, where her fellow deafness and so turned to
students included Grieg, Dvorˇák, writing instead of music. She
and Tchaikovsky. Back in England, was made a Dame of the British
she started to win recognition for Empire in 1922 and died in 1944.
musical composition in the 1890s,
championed by such diverse Other key works
figures as the exiled French
Empress Eugénie (widow of 1891 Mass in D
Napoleon III) and the playwright 1894 Fantasio
George Bernard Shaw. In 1910, 1914 The Boatswain’s Mate
Smyth met the women’s suffrage 1924 Entente cordiale

US_232-239_Dame_Ethel_Smyth.indd 235 27/03/18 4:49 PM