The Wreckers (opera)

The Wreckers is an opera in three acts, composed by Dame Ethel Smyth to a libretto in French by Henry Brewster. After spending considerable energy in trying to get the work performed in French, the first performance took place in a German translation by John Bernhoff, under the title of Strandrecht, at the Neues Theater, Leipzig on 11 November 1906. Smyth persisted in her attempts to see it staged elsewhere, but it was not until the conductor Thomas Beecham championed the work that a complete, staged performance was achieved in England in 1909 with funding support from her friend Mary Dodge.

Describing the opera in the New Grove Dictionary, Stephen Banfield notes "Its greatest strength is in its dramatic strategy, strikingly prophetic of (Britten's) Peter Grimes in details such as the offstage church service set against the foreground confrontation in Act 1." However, Amanda Holden makes the point that, musically, Smyth is "no Wagnerite, she makes use of his motivic technique, while the texture, orchestration, and even some of the music's dramatic density, show knowledge of the works of Richard Strauss ... but it also slips too readily into operatic convention."

Old tales of Cornish villages where, on stormy nights, the inhabitants lured passing sailing ships onto to the rugged Atlantic coast were commonplace in the nineteenth century. The cargoes plundered were regarded as legitimate reward for the hardships endured in this isolated and barren part of the country.

Therefore, when looking for a suitable theme for her third opera, it is little wonder that Smyth's thoughts should turn to this dramatic, yet romantic subject. It was after a taking a walking tour in Cornwall in 1886 that the idea came to her and, for several years, Smyth visited places where shipwrecks were said to have been engineered and interviewing anyone with evidence or memories of the wreckers. Fuller quotes from Smyth's memoirs about the pull of the subject matter:

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