The Wreckers by Ethel Smyth

The story

The 2022 Glyndebourne Festival opens with an exciting and important opera: Ethel Smyth's The Wreckers. This is the first staging of the work at Glyndebourne, its first major staging in the UK since 1939, and the first time the Festival has presented an opera written by a woman! Conductor Robin Ticciati leads the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Glyndebourne Chorus, and the formidable cast includes Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts, Marta Fontanals-Simmons, Donovan Singletary, and Philip Horst. The opera tells the story of an isolated and devout community in Cornwall that finds itself in a desperate situation. The only hope for its inhabitants lies with the shipwrecked sailors who wash up on their shores, and when they begin deliberately causing shipwrecks for financial gain, they set the stage for a tragedy. A love story, a portrait of fear, and a cryptic representation of mob mentality, don't miss this hidden gem of 20th-century English classical music.