Bard SummerScape 2015 to Present THE WRECKERS

Reviving important but neglected operas is one of the ways the Bard SummerScape festival has established itself as "a hotbed of intellectual and aesthetic adventure" (New York Times), and this year's immersion in "Chávez and His World" is no exception. Like Mexican composer Carlos Chávez, who is the focus of this season's 26th annual Bard Music Festival, Dame Ethel Smyth faced marginalization by the classical community. A Victorian-born Englishwoman, and a bisexual suffragette at that, her music is still only rarely programmed. Although her one-act opera Der Wald has the distinction of remaining the only work by a female composer ever produced at the Metropolitan Opera, The Wreckers (1902-4), her greatest contribution to the genre, has yet to be staged in the United States. SummerScape's upcoming presentation, then, marks the first fully-staged production of Smyth's masterpiece in America. Returning to direct is European Opera Prize-winner Thaddeus Strassberger, who scored previous SummerScape hits with Le roi malgré lui, Les Huguenots, Der ferne Klang, and 2013's first full American staging of Sergei Taneyev's Oresteia. This was pronounced "a revelation" by the Financial Times, which concluded: "Some of the most important summer opera experiences in the U.S. are not at the better known festivals but at Bard SummerScape." Taking place on Bard's glorious Hudson Valley campus in the striking Frank Gehry-designed Fisher Center, The Wreckers' five performances (July 24, 26, 29,& 31; Aug 2) will feature the American Symphony Orchestra under the leadership of music director Leon Botstein, whose 2007 U.S. concert premiere of Smyth's opera was hailed as "one of the best he has ever put on" (New York Times).

To see a video about operas at Bard SummerScape, click here: https://vimeo.com/fishercenter/review/121098922/61eb6d3258

About Ethel Smyth, only female composer staged at Met to date

As Opera News reports, Ethel Smyth (1858-1944) is widely recognized as "the greatest female composer of the 19th and early 20th centuries." Born into the highly gendered society of Victorian England, she faced numerous obstacles to her career, from the resistance of her military father to the bias of critics who considered her works unfeminine. Nevertheless, her determination prevailed. Not content to write parlor music, she set out to conquer the male-dominated worlds of the opera house and concert hall as well. She gave up composing only when deafness overcame her in later life, by which time her published output encompassed six operas, a concert mass, a double concerto, a choral symphony, songs with piano and orchestral accompaniment, organ pieces, and chamber music, and her craft was such that she counted Tchaikovsky and Debussy among her admirers. As indomitably bold in her personal life as in her career, Smyth's lovers included both men and women, notably leading suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst. Smyth herself became a prominent member of the "Votes for Women" movement, her involvement including a stint in prison and her composition The March of the Women, which was adopted as the suffragettes' anthem. In recognition of her work as composer, writer, and campaigner, she was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1922. Smyth herself explained: "I feel I must fight for [my music], because I want women to turn their minds to big and difficult jobs; not just to go on hugging the shore, afraid to put out to sea."

About her most important opera, The Wreckers

It was a local legend about the sea, heard on vacation in Cornwall, that provided Smyth with the inspiration for her third and finest opera. Composed to a libretto by her friend and lover Henry Brewster, The Wreckers (1902-04) depicts the nefarious Cornish coastal practice of luring ships onto the rocks to plunder them. Conflict arises in a remote village community for which, under the leadership of Pastor Pascoe, such wrecking constitutes an act of religious faith. Pitted against this community are Pascoe's young wife Thirza and her lover Mark, who conspire to save the ships by kindling secret beacons to guide them. Caught red-handed, the lovers are tried by a village tribunal and condemned to die in a sea-filled cave.

The first full-length opera by an English composer to use native setting and folklore, The Wreckers marks the nation's most important contribution to the genre since the time of Purcell. Thanks to the muscular vigor of Smyth's writing, it was considered by Sir Thomas Beecham, conductor of its London premiere, as "one of the three or four English operas of real musical merit and vitality." As Leon Botstein has said,

"There's a Wagnerian lushness and fullness, the majesty of high drama and the intimacy of a love story. But it has lightness, too, through the use of folk melodies, veering, at times, toward comic opera."

Smyth's opera was moreover thematically prescient, addressing the potential dangers of mass hysteria, populist justice, and unquestioned religious faith, all issues with profound resonance for audiences today. After a 1995 concert performance at London's BBC Proms, the Telegraph declared it a "revelation," adding: "Those who think that English opera started with Peter Grimes will need to think again." Similarly, in 2007, when Botstein led the American Symphony Orchestra in the opera's first U.S. concert performance at Avery Fisher Hall, the New York Times realized, "The Wreckers gets your attention. It charges at the audience with all guns blazing. ... Smyth knew what she was doing." As for the performance, the Times noted, "Mr. Botstein responded with a bang-up (literally) performance, one of the best he has ever put on."

About Bard's first fully staged American production

As the long overdue first American staging of The Wreckers, Bard's production not only offers the chance to hear Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra revisit their celebrated interpretation, but marks a major historical milestone. Starring as Thirza is mezzo Katharine Goeldner, familiar from her recent appearances in the title role of Carmen at Lyric Opera of Chicago and in Anna Bolena at Welsh National Opera and the Metropolitan Opera. "Goeldner's intensity is shattering, and she rivets attention during the many moments when called upon to remain alone onstage," marvels Variety, while New Yorkmagazine notes that she gives "as spectacular a demonstration of mezzo-soprano coloratura virtuosity as you are likely to hear anywhere today." Reprising from Avery Fisher Hall the role of Thirza's husband, Pascoe, is baritone Louis Otey, whose international credits include the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, Covent Garden, and Theater an der Wien. In the title role of Rigoletto, he was "ardent and moving," impressing the New York Times with his "powerful performance"; as Puccini's Sharpless, the UK's Telegraph found him "outstanding." English tenor Neal Cooper, recognized as a "huge asset" (Sunday Times, UK) to Tristan und Isolde at the Royal Opera House this season, completes The Wreckers' love triangle as the young fisherman Mark. Australian soprano Sky Ingram, star of director Thaddeus Strassberger's world premiere production of Glare at Covent Garden this winter, brings her "compelling stage presence, great looks and a versatile soprano voice" (Observer, UK) to the role of young Avis, whose jealousy leads to the lovers' downfall, with baritone Michael Mayes - "by far the best singer and most convincing actor in the cast" (Wall Street Journal) of San Francisco's Dead Man Walking this spring - as her father, lighthouse keeper Lawrence.

Directing the production is Thaddeus Strassberger, whose previous SummerScape opera productions are among Bard's most resounding success stories. TheFinancial Times declared: "Les Huguenots in Bard's staging is a thriller from beginning to end. ... Five Stars." New York magazine named his treatment of Der ferne Klang one of the "Top Ten Classical Music Events of 2010"; the Wall Street Journal considered his take on Le roi malgré lui "hilarious"; and his first full American staging of Oresteia was nominated for a 2014 International Opera Award. The Wreckers' set design is by Erhard Rom, a finalist for the 2015 International Opera "Designer of the Year" Award, with costumes by Kaye Voyce, whose extensive credits range from Broadway to the Royal Shakespeare Company, by way of numerous Bard theater and dance productions. Rounding out The Wreckers' design team is JAX Messenger, whose lighting previously graced SummerScape's Oresteia, "serv[ing] admirably to enliven Mr. Strassberger's eerie, occasionally loopy milieu" (New York Times). The new production will run for five performances (July 24, 26, 29, & 31; Aug 2), with an Opera Talk, free and open to the public, before the matinee on July 26.

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