Les naufrageurs

On the storm-lashed coasts of 18th-century Cornwall, starving fisherfolk survive by “wrecking”—luring passing ships to their doom, and living off the plunder. Pascoe, rector of the village, actually blesses this deadly trade. But his young wife, Thirza, is horrified, and when the wrecks stop coming, her secret relationship with the fisherman Mark draws the attention of a community so used to murder that they no longer regard it as a sin. In 1906, when Ethel Smyth and her librettist Henry Brewster (who drafted the original text in French) composed The Wreckers, they knew exactly what it meant to feel forbidden passions in a censorious society. Brewster’s dark, psychologically complex story fascinated Smyth, and she draws the morally ambiguous Pascoe (and Thirza’s spiteful rival Avis) in vivid musical detail. The two lovers, meanwhile, find escape in music of soaring romantic beauty. But the real protagonists of The Wreckers are the community and the sea. The burgeoning menace of the villagers makes for powerful choral scenes, while the sea—whether in storm or radiant calm—inspired Smyth to some of the most colourful music of her career. Dogged by misfortune and prejudice in Smyth’s lifetime, but admired by conductors as varied as Beecham and Mahler, The Wreckers is now receiving its due as a landmark of British opera.