The Wreckers gets Resurwreckted

Tl;dr — STAGE MORE SMYTH PLEASE

I’m more than familiar with stage nerves, but I’ve never been anxious going to watch a performance before. And yet as I made my way to Glyndebourne this week to see Ethel Smyth’s opera The Wreckers, it was with a definite sense of trepidation. Because Smyth’s operas are performed so rarely, I have never seen one of her operas performed live. Sure, I’ve heard the available recordings and played through the unrecorded operas myself. But this doesn’t get close to experiencing a full, live, production. Knowing the music only gives you some idea about whether the story works on stage. So I took my seat wondering whether I was about to find out that the magnum opus of the woman whose works I advocate for, just…isn’t that good?

Thankfully, I am delighted to report that my nerves were unfounded. I always loved the music, but with a production as excellent as this, The Wreckers is even better in performance than I hoped. The Overture is thrilling, the choruses terrifying, the climax heartbreaking. And this left me with a really mixed set of emotions. A small part of me hoped that there would be some blatantly obvious flaw that would explain why this piece is not firmly in the operatic canon. But there isn’t one. And this just tips the balance in favour of ‘outright sexism’ as the reason why this opera has been neglected. But I hope this production will be a turning point. The gauntlet has been well and truly thrown down for other opera houses. Glyndebourne have beautifully showcased what this opera is capable of — where will it be taken next?

What to do with the drunken sailors

Set in a remote Cornish village in the eighteenth century, Smyth’s opera revolves around a community who make their living by deliberately wrecking ships. They draw boats onto the rocks by extinguishing their lighthouse beam, then plunder the cargo. But somebody in their midst is betraying them, lighting torches along the coast — and they are determined to find out who. So begins a deadly chase that will ultimately end with the wreckers murdering the traitor, Marc, and his lover, Thurza. Director Melly Still has opted for a modern setting: Ana Inés Jabares-Pita’s costume designs have the wreckers clothing adorned with items scavenged from the seashore, while the rolling mists conceal then reveal abandoned detritus like trolleys and nets and balloons. But this is combined with video projections (by Akhila Krishnan) and four dancers who embody the ocean, which brings a pleasing touch of the surreal.

I love that Glyndebourne didn’t play it safe with the staging (even if the revolving stage was used so much I was at risk of feeling seasick). It would have been so easy to go for historical costumes. Instead, this production feels contemporary. And by doing so they’ve shown just how flexible The Wreckers could be, and how many different kinds of staging it could support. It would certainly bear a production with the opulent, expensive, traditional stage design that the Royal Opera House is so good at. The craggy cliffs and cavernous tunnels are crying out for this kind of backdrop. But I would also love to see a production that really hones in on the more psychological aspects of the opera, and goes all-in on lighting and video design with a relatively bare set. Krishnan’s video projections provided some of the highlights of the Glyndebourne staging, perfectly capturing the mercurial, untameable quality of Smyth’s sea. And the curtain vanishing rather than rising, retreating like mist rolling over the ocean at the start of the production, was an inspired touch. The Wreckers could certainly shine in a staging which foregrounded innovative visuals, like Simon McBurney’s staging of The Magic Flute for English National Opera.

The Wreckers is a grisly story, and one made even more so by the fact that the church is complicit in the wreckers’ murderous campaigns. One of the village leaders is the pastor, Pasko, and he tells his flock that wreckages are God’s way of providing for them. This is one of the aspects that caused most controversy when The Wreckers was first staged. Critics were scandalised that anyone — and especially a woman — would set a text of such ‘exceptionally nasty character’. But the religious dimension felt peculiarly underplayed in Glyndebourne’s production. It was neither aurally nor visually prominent. The original stage directions call for a chapel and a ringing church bell in the opening scene, both of which were omitted. I wonder how it would change the opera’s dynamics to have dominant religious imagery throughout — to hear a church bell tolling as the wreckers proclaim themselves ‘God’s chosen’, or to see Pasko more obviously dressed as a pastor when he delivers his verdict that God punishes the town’s sins by preventing wrecks.

Ethel Smyth by John SInger Sargent

Words, words, words

When The Wreckers was performed in England in 1909, critics were divided about the libretto, written by Smyth’s partner, Henry Brewster. ‘The composer has been considerably handicapped by the libretto’, one wrote. ‘The story is thin and wanting in dramatic interest.’ Another thought the libretto so deficient that ‘it is somewhat notable that it should have inspired the composer to write so much striking music.’ This theme has been reprised in some of the 2022 reviews, passing the verdict that ‘the plot is convoluted and ponderous, there is too little action, and the story drags.’

I admit that I’m a little puzzled by this. It’s not the best libretto that I’ve ever heard, but it’s also not the worst. (I’d direct anyone who thinks Brewster belabours a point to the second act of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, for example.) And for me, if anything, one of the strengths of the third act is how quickly the opera finishes once the wreckers have decided to leave Marc and Thurza to drown. When the end comes it is swift and brutal — no lengthy reprieve for a beautiful but dramatically implausible aria from the dying.

But I’m also open to persuasion on the libretto. Because although Glyndebourne’s on-stage action was mostly compelling, there were some moments that came across as a little muddled and diffuse. The difficulty with dealing with a new staging, however, is that it’s sometimes difficult to tell whether this was because of the staging or the libretto, or an unfortunate combination of both.

When the wreckers hold a secret court to judge the traitor, for example, they repeatedly change their minds about who is responsible. Suspicion first falls on Pasko and then Thurza, before Marc steps forward and confesses. Still’s staging has each of the accused brought up to the gallows, climbing up and down a staircase in the centre of the stage. The extreme indecision on the wreckers’ part feels dramatically weak, but it could perhaps be made convincing with a staging that foregrounds that they are undecided, and they themselves are confused by their shifting loyalties — not that they are mere seconds away from hanging multiple people with no evidence beyond hearsay.

Similarly, it wasn’t really until the third act that I really believed that and Marc and Thurza’s relationship had any relevance to the plot. Until they publicly declared their love for one another before the community, and Thurza said that it’s because of her that he has been lighting the beacons, it felt as though the entire story would have happened whether or not they had ever met. And even then, everyone’s lying to save everyone else in this scene, so it still wasn’t obvious that the whole story was set in motion by them falling in love. Which is a bit of a problem, given that their adulterous relationship is a central motivation for the opera’s action.

Maybe it was unconvincing here because Still had them physically distant for much of their Act II dialogue, separated by the sea when they try to run into each other’s arms. A production that allowed them to be more physically connected might have made their relationship more convincing. But it could just as easily be an issue with the libretto that wouldn’t really be resolved in a different rendering. Until the third act, Marc’s motivations are extremely unclear. He could well be acting on his own, with Thurza just brought along for the ride.

Or, possibly, their relationship falling into the background is just a problem in this particular version, which tried to get as close as possible to Smyth’s first score. Because of The Wreckers’ patchy performance history — it’s been performed in German and in English, but never in the original French, which the Glyndebourne team used — there’s no “definitive” score. Glyndebourne restored original music that was later cut, and as a result their version differs quite a bit from that used by Odaline de la Martinez for the 1994 Proms. The Wreckers is in dire need of a clear, widely available, performance edition. How can an opera possibly get a foothold in the repertory if the production team have to pretty much make their own edition every time it’s staged?

But if one just isn’t content with the libretto, there’s always the possibility of changing some of the words to make the opera more dramatically coherent. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that a libretto has been updated or altered for contemporary performance. Watching this production made me more convinced than ever that Smyth’s music needs and deserves to be heard. Even though she would balk at the suggestion that a single word by Brewster might be changed, I’d rather that than have a patchy libretto be an excuse to keep The Wreckers out of opera houses.

(One thing’s for sure. Whatever future directors do with the libretto, it would do no harm to cut the dodgy rat metaphor in the first act. When Thurza’s love-rival, Avis, realises that Marc no longer loves her, she attacks and kills a rat, saying that her heart, like the rat’s, beats no more. In the Glyndebourne production this moment was more comic than anything else, but I don’t think it’s the director’s fault. It’s like a bad metaphor from one of Strindberg’s less subtle symbolist plays has suddenly scurried onto the stage. Maybe it could work with a less literal interpretation of the rat, but…I doubt it.)

‘The best opera ever written by an English composer’

Bringing an opera into the repertory is a wonderful, exhilarating, challenging opportunity. I loved so much about this production — how the rivalry between Avis and Thurza was brought out, the way that the chorus brought a sense of threat and violence, the superlative performances from the soloists, chorus, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra — that it makes me excited to see what future performers will do with these roles. Writing Smyth’s biography, one of the things that really stuck with me was reading her diary entries wracked with worry that her music would die with her, then seeing her work be summarily dismissed in her obituaries. Just as she feared, when she was no longer alive to fight her corner, it was easy to dismiss her and her work as a passing eccentricity, a blip in the history of British music that was best forgotten. So it made me a bit emotional sitting in the packed opera house, thinking about how happy Smyth would have been to see her work being enjoyed over a hundred years after she wrote it, and given such careful treatment by a stellar company.

With Robin Ticciati conducting, it was easy to hear why reviewers once thought this ‘the most remarkable work ever produced by a woman-composer’. And perhaps it is — but also perhaps it isn’t. Until we hear more works by women, we’ll never know. This may be the first time an opera by a woman has been staged at Glyndebourne, but with any luck it will be the first of many. There are many operas by historical women that are just waiting for a revival like this. I can’t wait to see what happens next for them — and for Ethel Smyth and her troublesome wreckers.

The Wreckers runs at Glyndebourne until the 24th June; it will then be broadcast from the BBC Proms on 24th July. You can buy the recording of the 1994 Proms performance from Retrospect Opera here.