How thrilling is this...next year's (2015) Bard Festival will offer staged performances of Ethel Smyth's masterpiece. I assume the dates will be in July, as were the perfs. of Weber's Euryanthe this year.
The theme of the 2015 Festival itself will have nothing to do with Dame Ethel, it is Mexican and 20th century: Carlos Chavez and his World. This will be very exciting for many of us as well, but the Chavez/Revueltas orbit largely falls outside the remit of this forum, though the music of Manuel Ponce, which may make an appearance or two, would be grist for our mill.
Botstein's devotion to The Wreckers will be vividly recalled by those who attended the ASO concert version a few years back. Not only was there a large portrait of the composer onstage, but during the thunderous applause, Botstein triumphantly held the score over his head...
Very, very exciting. I may have to go more than once.
David
T'would be lovely should a DVd therefrom emerge!!!
That would indeed be joy and riches untold.
Is this in London? I may just have to reschedule my trip back to the UK next year! Wow!
At the risk of being called a "princess" again, can we have some info. about the festival and its location, please?
Thanks! :)
It's in the USA...Bard College campus, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY... about 2+ hours north of NYC. The Bard Festival runs a very comfy luxury bus from Lincoln Center directly to the Frank Gehry opera house (the Fisher Center) there. Couldn't be easier, at least from the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where I am lucky enough to live.
http://fishercenter.bard.edu/bmf/ (http://fishercenter.bard.edu/bmf/)
David
"princess"??
I missed something...
David
You did. Thankfully.
Thanks, David. You are, indeed, fortunate to live within reasonable traveling distance. The Wreckers is an adventurous choice - I hope it is well-received.
super to read the news :)
I wrote to the Manager of Fisher Center's Box Office and he replied that at this time the problems of royalties and licensing would make the production of a DVD more unlikely, so if any of you is sitting on an extra million or so.........Ah, well, back to my Conifer CDs and pictures in my mind.
Latest from Bard:
http://fishercenter.bard.edu/calendar/event.php?eid=128383
(http://fishercenter.bard.edu/calendar/event.php?eid=128383)Tickets go on sale to those on the email list Feb. 10.
Best, David
I'm fortunate enough to live within an hour of Bard College, so there was no way I was going to miss this year's operatic re-discovery. I was at last night's performance of "The Wreckers" and must say I feel more positive about it the following day than at the performance itself. That had little to do with the music - lush late Romanticism laced with impressionistic touches that effectively evoked the sea and harsh landscapes of Cornwall. It had more to do with the premise: nearly all of the opera's characters are religious fanatics, which leaves little room for dramatic subtlety. The towering yet claustrophobic sets only reinforced the feeling of overwhelm.
At a performance level, it adhered to the high standard already established by conductor Leon Botstein and the Festival Orchestra. More so even than "Boris Godunov" the chorus has the lead role; they received the loudest applause at the curtain call, proof they did their job superbly. The vocal and dramatic standout was clearly Sky Ingram as the vengeful anti-heroine Avis.
Taking all into account, the stage premiere of this historically significant work is going to set the standard for its performance. A crowd-pleaser it isn't, but impressive it certainly is, and the fact that I'm still grappling with it the following day is a testament both to its power and Ethyl Smyth's vision. Alas, its story is more timely now than the year (1906) in which it was written.
A search for "Summerscape, The Wreckers, Reviews" is certainly worth it, especially if you weren't able to attend in person. There's a fascinating NPR audio feature that includes snippets of Dame Ethyl herself in 1937 and an excerpt from her suffragette anthem "March of the Women."
Off to see the final performance tomorrow!
Here's the link to the NPR article/broadcast:
http://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2015/07/23/410033088/one-feisty-victorian-womans-opera-revived (http://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2015/07/23/410033088/one-feisty-victorian-womans-opera-revived)
David
I want to the August 2nd performance. Quite a grand opera. Check out that set. (https://bachtrack.com/files/26390-wreckers_bard_cory_weaver_resized.jpg)
I traveled over to Tanglewood after that for some opera highlights. Got to hear some Mozart Idomineo - don't hear that much. But it was all pretty anticlimactic after The Wreckers.
I'm with you there....The Wreckers was splendid and works very well on stage. It was certainly better cast than Botstein's 2007 concert version (we had a real heldentenor this time) After the first act, I thought that Brewster's text wasn't as bad I remembered...but then we got to the tenor's big scene in Act 2 and I literally couldn't figure out what he was singing about. You could feel Dame Ethel's usually indefatigable commitment ebbing about the same time, but she recovered for an act finale of truly Wagnerian splendor. The staging nearly scuttled the end of Act 3 (how many people were drowning? 2? 4? more than that?) and Botstein rushed through Smythe's glorious final bars (to hear how hair-raising and utterly original these can sound, check out the Conifer complete recording)
A great afternoon, I hope finances permit these stagings of rare works to continue. I notice that next year's ASO series does not include a rare opera presented in concert for the first time in many years. I'm told there just isn't any money.
David
I was chuffed to see that Bard College's Fisher Center website is streaming a performance of "The Wreckers" from 2015 as part of their "Upstreaming" series. A fantastic performance to watch again for those of us who got to see it in person, but now hopefully more folks can check it out.
Here's the address for those who'd like to watch - https://fishercenter.bard.edu/events/ups-the-wreckers/
cheers,
Daniel
Thanks for the link, Daniel. It looks like a splendid production.