The struggle of the female musician
In July 2022, hundreds of elegant opera-goers gathered on the lawns of Glyndebourne Manor in Sussex to picnic in the interval of a rarely performed early twentieth century work, The Wreckers, by the suffragette composer Dame Ethel Smyth. This strikingly powerful piece of music, which tells the story of Cornish villagers who lure ships onto rocks in order to plunder them, was the first opera by a female composer to be staged at the prestigious British festival and was extremely well-received. The Times of London praised its “wild waves of passion.” Yet The Wreckers has had a difficult history.
