Ethel Smyth

Les naufrageurs is a French-language opera in three acts composed by Dame Ethel Smyth to a libretto by Henry Brewster, telling of the plundering of ships by Cornish villagers. Completed in 1904, it was premiered in 1906 in Leipzig in a German translation, with cuts, before being championed by Sir Thomas Beecham and given performances in 1909 in London, now in an English translation as The Wreckers

Written by Dame Ethel Smyth, English composer and leader in the women’s suffrage movement, The Wreckers was first performed in Germany in 1906 and was mounted in the composer’s homeland in 1909. This powerful three-act opera about piracy, love, and betrayal in a community of religious fanatics received its U.S. premiere in 2015 at Bard SummerScape in a penetrating production directed by Thaddeus Strassberger, with the American Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Maestro Leon Botstein.

Based on Ethel Smyth's opera The Wreckers, Kerstin Steeb’s Strandrecht creates a vision of civil disobedience in the guise of a feminist opera—positioned somewhere between lavish music theatreand a performative experience. A contemporary interpretation of this hitherto underappreciated work emerges from a blend of original piano passages, classical vocals, electronic sounds, and new text fragments.