Dame Ethel Smyth is perhaps best known for her association with the Suffragette Movement, for which she wrote the famous ‘March of the Women’. But in fact her musical career of conducting and composing spanned four decades including the creation of several large-scale orchestral and operatic works. One of the greatest of these is her opera ‘The Wreckers’, a dark tale of love, betrayal and revenge set in a poor Cornish community bent on luring ships on to rocks to plunder their cargoes.
Now, exactly one hundred years after its premiere in Leipzig in 1906, ‘The Wreckers’ comes to Cornwall itself, where it opens tonight at the Hall for Cornwall in Truro in a production staged by the county’s Duchy Opera. Judi Herman has been finding about more about ‘The Wreckers’ with the help of the musicologist Sophie Fuller and the director of Duchy Opera’s production, David Sulkin. She also delved into Dame Ethel Smyth’s own memoirs, where she vividly recalled its making.
‘The Wreckers’ opens at the Hall for Cornwall on November 8th with two more performances on 10th and 11th November.
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