1 Foreword to Ethel Smyth, The Wreckers (CD re-release of 1994 Conifer Classics recording), Anne-Marie Owens, Justin Lavender, Peter Sidhom, David Wilson-Johnson, Judith Howarth, Anthony Roden, Brian Bannatyne-Scott, Annemarie Sand, Huddersfield Choral Society, BBC Philharmonic, cond. Odaline de la Martinez. Retrospect Opera RO004, 2017. Christopher Wiley Originally issued on the Conifer Classics label, this CD release represented the first – and until recently, the only – of Ethel Smyth’s (1858–1944) six operas commercially available in a modern recording. It is eminently fitting that it should be The Wreckers that was afforded the distinction, at the BBC Proms in 1994, of commemorating the 50th anniversary of the composer’s death: arguably the greatest of her operas, it was certainly her most ambitious and monumental, having been her only three-act stage work and requiring significantly larger musical resources than any of the others. Composed in 1902–4, The Wreckers therefore constitutes the jewel in the crown of Smyth’s considerable contribution to the genre; decades later, in 1935, the composer herself pronounced it ‘The work by which I stand or fall’. It signalled the culmination of the activity that she had commenced with the comedy of errors Fantasio (1892–4) and continued with the music-drama Der Wald (1899–1901), being the last of her collaborations with Henry Brewster as librettist. Whatever the exact nature of their relationship, Brewster evidently exerted a major influence on Smyth’s life, even following his death in 1908. Tragically, he was never to witness a presentation of the opera in Smyth’s home country, with the exception of the concert performance of the first two acts at Queen’s Hall, London on 30 May 1908 (‘On the cliffs of Cornwall’ having been given in the same venue earlier that month), a fortnight prior to his passing. The occasion was the product of a single orchestral rehearsal, and the choruses were realised by just eight female singers; as the composer subsequently remarked, ‘they hadn’t had a dog’s chance’. Smyth’s next opera, the light-hearted The Boatswain’s Mate (1913–14), reflects a change of direction in her output that she was to portray as a ‘new departure’ in English comic opera, whereas her previous works had been written with Continental Europe in mind. Nonetheless, The Boatswain’s Mate continues to bear the hallmarks of Smyth’s musical apprenticeship in Germany in its weighty, through-composed second half (a stark contrast from the ballad opera style of the first). It was followed by Fête galante (1921–2), which exhibits an indebtedness to commedia dell’arte as well as a foray into neoclassicism rare for the composer, and by Entente cordiale (1923–4), for whose post-war military setting Smyth reverted to the English light opera tradition. The Wreckers was not, however, the most popular of Smyth’s operas during her own lifetime; that accolade was ultimately claimed by The Boatswain’s Mate. Nor did it succeed in breaking new historical ground in quite the manner of Der Wald, which – in addition to being performed at Covent Garden, London in 1902–3, where The Wreckers was also produced in 1910 – famously became the first work by a female composer presented by The Metropolitan Opera, New York City, in 1903, an achievement not repeated until as recently as December 2016 (by Kaija Saariaho’s L’Amour de Loin). In this respect, The Wreckers, as was often the case in Smyth’s career, fell victim to circumstances beyond her own control: she described as ‘one of the small tragedies of my life’ Mahler’s untimely departure in 1907 from his position as director of the Vienna Court Opera, one of Europe’s leading theatres, having received an initially positive response to her score from his assistant Bruno Walter.