One image from Ethel Smyth’s life sticks in the memory. A committed suffragette, she was incarcerated in Holloway Prison in 1912 for throwing a brick through a politician’s window and was reportedly found there unabashed, conducting a chorus of fellow inmates in her “March of the Women” out of the cell window with a toothbrush.
Feisty, unstoppable, Smyth rose to prominence as a composer in defiance of the attitudes of her time. She was the first woman to have an opera performed at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York (it would be more than 100 years before the next) and Glyndebourne is riding the crest of a wave of new interest in her music by opening its 2022 season with a rare production of her opera The Wreckers.
For all its weaknesses (and they are many), the opera is worth seeing at least once. Smyth’s music goes at it hammer and tongs and Glyndebourne’s cast does her the honour of not selling it short, every singer passionately committed, the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Robin Ticciati never flagging through three acts of pounding energy and volume.
For the record, Glyndebourne has also prepared a new edition of the score, which reinstates 20 to 30 minutes of music (Smyth had strong opinions about people who messed with her scores). Whether this is for the best is a moot point, but at least we are hearing all there is to be heard.
The story takes us to Cornwall and a community that lives by plundering ships drawn on to the rocks. There is the basis of a strong operatic plot here, looking at the isolation of outsiders and an inflamed populace seeking scapegoats, though one would hardly know it from the libretto. The motivation of the characters is muddle-headed and we never get the clear moral message we expect. Peter Grimes this is not, for all the similarities.
The Wreckers had its premiere in 1906 and Smyth’s music flits like a magpie over the styles around at the time. Bizet and Wagner are preferred, also echoes of Debussy and Richard Strauss, though the single-minded force with which they are forged into one is very much Smyth’s own.
Everybody gets plenty of big stuff to sing. Rodrigo Porras Garulo is impressive as the romantic tenor hero and is supported with strong singing, but not much stage presence, by mezzo Karis Tucker. Lauren Fagen whips up intensity as the vengeful love rival and Philip Horst booms portentously as the pastor. The text, sung in the original French, is only intermittently intelligible. Melly Still’s updated production majors on gloomy atmosphere and has no need of an irritating quartet of flouncing dancers.
After a restless lack of focus in the first half, Smyth pulls everything together powerfully for the final act. As the populace, portrayed by Glyndebourne’s excellent chorus, rounds on its chosen victims, the sheer dramatic force is something to behold. Think of this: there is no English opera written before or after The Wreckers that can match Smyth’s open-hearted, unapologetic, no-holds-barred passion.
★★★★☆
![A woman wearing a colourful dress and a wide-brimmed straw hat sings with one arm extended](https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/https%3A%2F%2Fd1e00ek4ebabms.cloudfront.net%2Fproduction%2F27df8523-eac4-4dec-b7fd-0c4e9c850548.jpg?dpr=1&fit=scale-down&quality=highest&source=next&width=700)
The other opera opening the season is Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro. The temperature is lower here in Michael Grandage’s production from 2012, the one with the handsome Moorish designs warmed by a glowing Spanish sun. Unfortunately, the flower-power-era setting with its hippie hairstyles and flared trousers is overplayed and the comedy, with sexed-up surtitles, turns too broad.
The best reason for catching this revival comes with some of the singing, notably the pristine, diamond-cut soprano of Hera Hyesang Park’s Susanna. Brandon Cedel and Germán Olvera field lyrical voices as Figaro and the Count, the latter more elegantly focused. Amanda Woodbury sings with generosity of voice, but less than an ideal classical cut as the Countess, and Emily Pogorelc is the bright-voiced Cherubino. Giancarlo Andretta, conducting the LPO, goes for swift speeds and a sleek style. It all felt tame, though, compared to the full-frontal dramatic assault the night before.
★★★☆☆
‘The Wreckers’ to June 24, ‘Figaro’ to July 16, glyndebourne.com
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