#dame ethel smyth

[infinitelytheheartexpands]

Late for the asks but here's one: fantasy cast for an opera you haven't fantasy casted yet

okay i just decided to put my massive playlist of stuff and fantasy cast the first thing that came up, so:

dame ethel smyth’s the wreckers:

pascoe: gerald finley

thirza: sasha cooke (yes i know she’s already done the role BUT IT WASN’T FILMED)

mark: allan clayton

avis: ying fang or jacquelyn stucker

[opera-ghosts]

OTD in Music History: British composer and suffragist Dame Ethel Smyth (1858 - 1944) -- the first female composer ever to be granted a damehood (in 1922) -- is born in London. Few figures in musical history have led a more colorful life than Smyth. After a bitter fight with her father over her desire to pursue music, Smyth was allowed to study composition at the Leipzig Conservatory. Although she left after only a year (disillusioned with what she considered to be the low standard of teaching), her attendance there put her into contact with luminaries including Johannes Brahms (1833 - 1897), Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840 - 1893), Antonin Dvorak (1841 - 1904), Edvard Grieg (1843 - 1907), and Clara Schumann (1819 - 1896). Upon her return to England, she also formed a friendship with Sir Arthur Sullivan (1842 - 1900) in the final years of his life. Smyth's extensive body of work includes two notable operas: "The Wreckers" -- which is considered by some critics to be the most important English opera composed during the period between Henry Purcell (1659 - 1695) and Benjamin Britten (1913 - 1976) -- and "Der Wald" (1903), which for more than a century stood as the only opera by a woman composer that had ever been produced at New York's Metropolitan Opera (until Kaija Saariaho's "L'Amour de loin" was premiered in 2016). Smyth’s final major completed work was a vocal symphony entitled "The Prison" (1931); by the mid-1930s, she had gone almost completely deaf. Smyth was also a historically important British suffragist (who served two months in prison for her political activism) and she was openly gay at a time when that was highly unusual. At age 71, she fell in love with famed writer Virginia Woolf (1882 - 1941). Woolf, nearly 25 years her junior, was both alarmed and amused by the situation, comparing it to “being caught by a giant crab." The two women eventually settled into a close platonic friendship. PICTURED: A 1931 autograph letter written and signed by Smyth to a friend, concerning musical activities.

[lesser-known-composers]

Dame Ethel Smyth - The Prison, Part II. The Deliverance: Death calls him (The Last Post) - Gloring, he obeys the summons "For years you have been conning your lesson" ·

James Blachly · Experiential Orchestra · Dashon Burton · Sarah Brailey · Experiential Chorus

[terrainofheartfelt]

oops i did it again

I made something really silly wanna see it

[thatnerdyqueer]

yall im writing a musical about Dame Ethel Smyth, a classical composer and suffragette that randomly had affairs with Emmeline Pankhurst and Virginia Woolf (?)

is this something the people are interested in? Would you watch/listen?????

[odedmusic]

Ethel Smyth Serenade in D

Crazy this amazing dame is new to me, she should be much more famous. Amazing work! interesting writing on this YT upload as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethel_Smyth #OdedFriedGaon #OdedMusic  #OdedWeekendPlaylist #OdedLengthySonicMasterpieces

[that-twink-composer]

*****DAY 10*****

Today is a very exciting day of Pride Month - Composer’s Edition because we’re going to be talking about a VERY special composer:

Dame Ethel Smyth!!!

Ethel Smyth was incredible, a feminist, and very lesbian. These things are not mutually exclusive. People weren’t so pleased that here she was an English lady writing music considered “masculine.” “Well, f*ck you,” Ethel Smyth probably replied to those critics because she kept doing it anyways. Her opera “The Wreckers” is said to be the greatest English opera between Purcell and Britten. Another one of her operas, Der Wald, was UNTIL LAST YEAR the only opera performed at the Met composed by a woman. In politics, she was an important figure in the suffrage movement and in 1911, her anthem “March of the Women” became the song of feminism. She had several affairs with women, the most important being Virginia Woolf and Emmeline Pankhurst. Throughout her life she was involved in several “unwomanly” pursuits such as tennis and horse-riding. She unfortunately lost her hearing and ceded composing later in life but then turned to writing. Her “masculine” compositional style can be seen in the above portion of her Cello Sonata, a perfect example of what kind of composer Smyth was because of its sheer awesomeness. 

[thatsonemorbidcorvid]

Dame Ethel Mary Smyth DBE (1858 – 1944) was an English composer and a member of the women's suffrage movement. Her compositions include songs, works for piano, chamber music, orchestral works, choral works and operas.

In 1910, Smyth joined the Women's Social and Political Union (WPSU), which agitated for women's suffrage, giving up music for two years to devote herself to the cause. She accompanied the charismatic leader of the WSPU, Emmeline Pankhurst, on many occasions, and her "The March of the Women" (1911) became the anthem of the suffragette movement.

Smyth had several passionate affairs in her life, most of them with women.

[queerasfact]

Hi! Happy Pride! Have you considered doing an episode on lesbian composer and suffragette Dame Ethel Smyth?

Thanks for the message and happy pride! Dame Ethel is indeed on our suggestions list.

-Alice

[infinitelytheheartexpands]

Top 5 operatic finds (new operas/productions/performers) of 2022?

in order of discovery:

-Paul Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler

-this is technically cheating because i had already heard but not seen the opera, especially live, but Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde

-Leos Janacek’s Kat’a Kabanova

-Dame Ethel Smyth’s The Wreckers

-Bohuslav Martinu’s The Greek Passion

bonus round—ten solo recital albums from this year that i would highly recommend, in no particular order:

[opera-ghosts]

Happy Birthday, Mme. Johanna Gadski. (Picture of her as Isolde).

Johanna Gadski studied singing at the Stettin High School with Anna Schröder-Chaloupka and when still very young was engaged by the Kroll Opera in Berlin, making her stage debut there in 1889. This was followed by engagements in Stettin, Mainz and Bremen as well as Berlin; her repertoire during this period included Agathe / Der Freischütz, Marguerite / Faust, Pamina / Die Zauberflöte, Berthe / Le Prophète, Donna Elvira / Don Giovanni and parts in the comic operas of Marschner and Lortzing. She also took the role of Bedura in d’Albert’s first opera, Der Rubin, which she sang with the composer conducting. Having married Hans Tauscher, a lieutenant in the German army, in 1892, Gadski had built up enough experience by 1894 to begin to appear internationally, which she did with a concert tour of Holland that year.

She was then invited to tour the USA with the Damrosch Opera Company during 1895 and 1896, making her debut in New York as Elsa / Lohengrin (1895) and creating the role of Hester Prynne in Damrosch’s opera The Scarlet Letter (1896). Other roles included Micaëla / Carmen and Marzellina / Fidelio. She toured again with the Damrosch Company during 1898 and 1899 before appearing for the first time at the Royal Opera House, London as Elisabeth / Tannhauser in 1899. This was followed by her successful debut at the Bayreuth Festival as Eva / Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.

In December 1899 Gadski made her debut with the Metropolitan Opera, substituting as Elisabeth in Philadelphia. Two weeks later, at the beginning of 1900, she first appeared in New York with the company as Senta / Der fliegende Holländer. She quickly became a key member of the Metropolitan Opera, singing Sieglinde / Die Walküre, Brünnhilde / Der Ring des Nibelungen, Elsa and Eva, together with more varied roles including the title part in Aida, Amelia / Un ballo in maschera, Santuzza / Cavalleria rusticana, Valentine / Les Huguenots, the Countess / Le nozze di Figaro, Micaëla, Donna Elvira and Pamina, as well as Röschen in the first performance of Dame Ethel Smyth’s Der Wald (1903).

Having left the Met in 1904 following a dispute over her salary, Gadski undertook extensive concert tours of the USA during 1905 and 1906. In Europe she studied Isolde / Tristan und Isolde with Lilli Lehmann, as well as singing at the Salzburg Festival in 1906 as Donna Elvira opposite Lehmann’s Donna Anna and in 1910 as Pamina opposite Lehmann’s First Lady. Financial matters resolved, she returned to the Met as Isolde in February 1907 and remained a valued member of the company until 1917, singing broadly the same parts as before, as well as Eurydice / Orfeo ed Eurydice (under Toscanini, 1909), Agathe and Leonora / Il trovatore.

In 1917, following America’s entry into World War I, a ban was placed upon German music and musicians in the US. Nonetheless Gadski remained in that country, but did not sing again until 1921 when she gave a rapturously received recital at Carnegie Hall, followed by a coast to coast concert tour which also took in Canada. She became an American citizen in 1925, returning to the operatic stage in 1928 with Die Walküre in Washington. From 1929 onwards Gadski toured America annually with various companies performing German opera, singing Brünnhilde, Isolde and Senta. She intended to continue such touring, but was killed in a motor accident in Berlin.

[lesser-known-composers]

Dame Ethel Mary Smyth - Violin Sonata in A minor , Op. 7

2022 女性作曲家系列作品集 指導教授 : 黃俊文 鋼琴合作 : 黃奕瑜

[jempai]

thinking about how Dame Ethel Smyth’s opera The Wreckers most definitely has gay themes and yet zero productions seem to capitalize on Avis’s homophobic allegory aria or try to cast Mark as a mezzo

anyways Peter Grimes and The Wreckers double bill when?

[disorganisedautodidact]

Currently obsessed with English composer Dame Ethel Smyth. This is her most acclaimed work:

She was also an activist in the women’s suffrage movement, and wrote this song, which became basically the anthem of the movement (lyrics):

Apparently, she had her fellow inmates sing this when she was in prison, conducting with her toothbrush! Oh, and did I mention whe was queer? Later in life, she suffered from hearing loss and increasingly turned from composing to writing books, which I now kind of want to read...

[musicalalmanac]

August 5, Birthday of Betsy Jolas (b. 1928)

August 5, Birthday of Betsy Jolas (b. 1928)

Born in Paris between WWI and WWII, Jolas grew up in an enviable milieu. Her mother was a well-known translator and her father founded the literary magazine, “transition,” which published James Joyce’ Finnegan’s Wake as a “Work in Progress.” Her studies at the Paris Conservatory were interrupted by WWII and she and her family decamped to the US, where she completed her studies at Bennington.…

[extr-em]

La vida musical de Virginia Woolf

Una mirada a la influencia de la música en la vida de la escritura, su vida y creencias. 

‘I always think of my books as music before I write them’

Es claro, por sus novelas y ensayos, que Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) fue una mente musical. Su escritura está repleta de referencias a músicos, públicos y convenciones sociales relacionadas con el mundo de la música. Algunos de los ejemplos más renombrados son compositores de la talla de Bach, Beethoven, Mozart y Wagner, además de mencionar a los músicos amigos suyos Dame Ethel Mary Smyth, Nadia Boulanger, Ralph Vaughan Williams y Bruno Walter.

Habiendo nacido en Londres, Woolf adquirió una formación básica musical desde muy joven. Continuó escuchando música a lo largo de toda su vida, manteniendo un muy organizado registro de cada una de sus experiencias en eventos musicales y escribiendo sus relatos al escuchar, por horas, piezas clásicas de gran importancia.

Su historia corta “Una melodía simple” explora las complejidades y retos de la comunicación a través del personaje principal, George Carslake, quien en la luz de una fiesta aprecia una pintura de manera muy particular.

“Al menos al señor Carslake le parecía muy bella porque, mientras estaba de pie en el rincón, desde donde podía admirarla, tenía el poder de componer y de apaciguar su mente. Él sentía que la imagen le daba proporción a sus emociones, ¡con lo desperdigadas y desordenadas que estaban en una fiesta como esta! Era como si un violinista estuviera tocando una vieja melodía inglesa, perfectamente serena, mientras la gente apostaba y tropezaba, maldecía, hurtaba y rescataba a quienes se estuvieran ahogando, demostrando increíbles –aunque innecesarios—raptos de habilidad. Él mismo no podía dar un espectáculo.“

En su novela “Los años” hay una mención de una presentación especial de la ópera Siegfried Idyll, siendo utilizada en el relato como una fuente de reafirmación de la simpatía judía de sus protagonistas en contraste con el fuerte antisemitismo del compositor. 

En su primera novela jamás escrita "Fin de viaje” se muestra a la protagonista tocando una sonata de Beethoven en el piano — una que usualmente solía pensarse como demasiado difícil para las mujeres, aumentando así sus conexiones con el feminismo. 

Más adelante afianzaría importantes lazos con la compositora Dame Ethel Smyth, una reconocida “suffragette”, feminista por el activismo radical y activista por la equidad de género, quien estudió música a pesar de la desaprobación de su padre. 

Y en “Noche y día”, las referencias a Mozart son el instrumento perfecto para criticar los cimientos de la sociedad profundamente patriarcal de esos tiempos. Para ello, encuentra necesario hacer que Cassandra Oatway, la prima de la protagonista, toque la flauta exquisitamente y tenga conversaciones profundas mientras la música suena de fondo.

No cabe duda de que Virginia Woolf cultivó a lo largo de sus años un enorme amor por la presentación musical y empezó a considerar la relación estrecha entre la música, el lenguaje, la expresión y la comunicación. Influenciada por todos estos compositores es que Woolf soñó modelar la forma de expresión total de la música dentro de sus letras. Las referencias musicales podían ilustrar su relato en aspectos que no podían ser expresados por el poder de las palabras por sí mismas. 

Para Virginia Woolf, entonces, la música poseía un tipo de proximidad esencial hacia la verdad, la realidad. Y no solo eso, sino que significó un puente poderoso que le permitió comentar sobre la sociedad mediante increíbles alusiones.