MODERN 1900 –1950 239
Dressed in red, the title character of
Judith Weir's opera Miss Fortune takes
center state at the United Kingdom
premiere of the work at the Royal Opera
House, Covent Garden, in 2012.drama” based on a short story of
the same name by Smyth’s friend
Maurice Baring.
Where Smyth led the way, many
others have followed. In Britain
alone, a generation of female
composers born in the decade that
The Wreckers was composed and
first performed included Elisabeth
Lutyens, Elizabeth Maconchy, and
Imogen Holst. The work of Lutyens
included nearly 200 scores for film
and radio, as well as the operas
The Numbered (1965) and Isis and
Osiris (1969). Best known for her
13 string quartets (1933–1984),
Maconchy also wrote five operas,
including The Sofa (1957) and The
Departure (1961). Holst, only child
of Gustav Holst, while a less prolific
composer, proved a tireless
assistant to Benjamin Britten. In
the late 20th century, the work of
two Scottish composers won world
acclaim. The 10 operas of TheaMusgrave include Mary, Queen
of Scots (1976), and Simón Bolívar
(1995), while the successes of
Judith Weir include A Night at
the Chinese Opera (1987), The
Vanishing Bridegroom (1990),
and Blond Eckbert (1994).Male heirs
It is not only female composers
who were influenced by Smyth.
Surprisingly, Benjamin Britten
seems not to have known TheWreckers, at least at first hand.
Yet his first opera, Peter Grimes,
premiered in 1945, has almost
uncanny parallels with Smyth’s
work. Both operas are set in remote
coastal areas, where a pair of
protagonists find themselves
at odds with the rest of the
community, which is in the grip
of evangelical religion and set on
violence against them. Both employ
the device of the protagonists
singing onstage while a chorus of
villagers perform a hymn offstage.
And both include powerful
orchestral evocations of the sea,
endowing it with a personal
presence and force so great that
the watery element becomes a
key presence in the work.
Whether Britten was aware
of The Wreckers or not, Smyth’s
work clearly played some role in
revitalizing a distinctively British
tradition of opera, both in terms of
music and subject matter. In this
sense, major male composers of the
20th century, such as Britten and
Michael Tippett, can be counted
among the inheritors of Smyth's
musical mantle. ■Miss Smyth is one of the
few women composers one
can seriously consider to
be achieving something
valuable in the field of
musical composition.
Pyotr Ilyich TchaikovskyUS_232-239_Dame_Ethel_Smyth.indd 239 27/03/18 4:49 PM