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This week's BBC Radio 3 Music Matters (December 15th, 12.15 GMT) is to include a feature on the Christmas music of Charles Dibdin, part of the 'Hidden Voices' strand.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001m33

There's a new re-release of this wonderful 1994 recording, conducted by Smyth's champion Odaline de la Martinez - there have been other re-releases, I know, and these are still available, but they're quite expensive. This one is nicely re-packaged (slimmer! not in a double jewel case), and the booklet's been completely re-typeset and includes a very interesting essay by Christopher Wiley, about Smyth reception in the past 25 years.
There are difficulties over the Amazon listing, I gather, so the one shown there may be the old one - you can tell by the price, though, as this one, released by Retrospect Opera, is probably around the £17.95 mark. It's most easily obtained direct from them, at www.retrospectopera.org.uk.

Retrospect Opera have just released a CD of music by Charles Dibdin, two of his theatrical 'Table Entertainments', The Musical Tour of Mr Dibdin and Christmas Gambols. It looks unusual and interesting.

The Amazon entry reads:
Charles Dibdin (1745-1814) was the leading British singer-songwriter of his age; this is the first album devoted to his songs. Having written and composed the most successful English operas of the 1770s, and achieved fame as an actor and singer, Dibdin developed his own one-man show, allowing him to display all his talents. He called these shows, in which he stood or sat at a piano, 'Table Entertainments'. His songs were written to be presented dramatically in these shows, and Retrospect Opera have recorded the songs as they were originally meant to be heard, in the first ever recreation of the Table Entertainments. The Musical Tour of Mr Dibdin is a shortened version of Dibdin's first Table Entertainment, from 1787, while the main piece, Christmas Gambols, is a complete Christmas show from 1795. Christmas Gambols, a celebration of traditional Christmas games and festivity, offers the fullest picture of an eighteenth-century English Christmas available anywhere. Dibdin's performing voice is brilliantly brought to life by the versatile talents of Simon Butteriss, and he is accompanied on a replica eighteenth-century fortepiano by Stephen Higgins. Full texts of the Table Entertainments are included in the booklet, along with introductory essays by Simon Butteriss, David Chandler and Jeremy Barlow.

There's a special offer on if you go direct to their website, www.retrospectopera.org.uk.

On Saturday March 4 - the whole programme starts at 9am, the Building a Library strand at 9.30. The BBC spiel says:

'Building a Library survey on the music of Dame Ethel Smyth. As part of Radio 3's celebration of International Women's Day, Kate Kennedy explores the music of an underrated English composer and a member of the women's suffrage movement. Smyth showed tenacity and courage in pursuing her career as a composer at a time when this was an unusual path for women. Sir Thomas Beecham visited her when she was in prison for her political activities, and discovered her leaning out of a window conducting with a toothbrush as her fellow inmates marched around the prison yard.'

The music includes extracts from:

Mass in D for soloists, chorus, orchestra and organ
The Boatswain's Mate: Overture
Serenade in D
Concerto for violin, horn and orchestra
Complete piano works
String Quartet in E minor
String Quintet in E major, Op. 1
Sonata for Violin and Piano in A minor, Op. 7
The Wreckers Overture
The Boatswain's Mate (from the complete recording)
Double Concerto in A for violin, horn & piano
Four Songs for mezzo & chamber ensemble
Three Songs for mezzo & piano
Lieder, Op. 4
Lieder und Balladen, Op. 3
Cello Sonata in C minor
Moods of the Sea (3)
Entente cordiale – Interlude
Fête galante – Minuet
Two Interlinked French Melodies

Should be an interesting survey.

A new CD from Retrospect Opera - Burnand & Solomon's Pickwick. The first Dickens musical (1889), and G&S-ish (Burnand was the librettist for Cox and Box). Coupled with George Grossmith's curtain-raiser Cups and Saucers, which mocks the contemporary obsession with all things Oriental. Cast is headed by Simon Butteriss. More info at www.retrospectopera.org.uk/Pickwick.html.

I hope people will be interested to know that the long-awaited recording of Smyth's Boatswain's Mate has been released.
Of all the early twentieth-century British operas making use of folk music to depict something of realistic rural life, this was the most popular. Smyth's suffragette anthem, The March of the Women, is significantly incorporated into the overture, and nursery rhymes and folk tunes abound in the main body of the work.
More details at Retrospect Opera's website, www.retrospectopera.org.uk - for sale there and via Amazon.co.uk. Nadine Benjamin, Edward Lee, Jeremy Huw Williams, with Odaline de la Martinez and the Lontano Ensemble.

Retrospect Opera's second recording is Solomon and Burnand's Pickwick, the first Dickens opera. Burnand, as many will know, was the librettist for Cox and Box - Solomon has hardly been recorded, if at all.

It's a cracking little piece, written for the domestic market, and very Sullivanesque, as you might expect. Simon Butteriss is singing Pickwick and Pamela Helen Stephens is singing Mrs Bardell.

Recording is scheduled for September 2016 and Retrospect Opera is seeking donations to help fund it - £25 will get you a CD and your name on the website, and of course larger donations bring bigger rewards. If anyone knows of any grant bodies who might be interested, please let me know at contact@retrospectopera.org.uk.

There's a lot more information on the website at www.retrospectopera.org.uk.

Just a heads-up that the recording by Retrospect Opera of the complete opera (in Smyth's 'reduced orchestration' version) should be out within a couple of months. The website gives the latest information www.retrospectopera.org.uk. Conducted by Odaline de la Martinez (who better?), with members of the Lontano Ensemble, and Nadine Benjamin, Edward Lee, Jeremy Huw Williams, and others.

Does anyone have any information on when this was last performed (in any form) in its entirety, and by whom?

I'd really like to see the manuscript of the full score but it appears to be lost - all ideas for its whereabouts welcomed! (Yes, I know Music Sales ought to have it, but they don't.)

Thanks.

I hope members of the list will be interested to know of two projects planned by the new group Retrospect Opera www.retrospectopera.org.uk.
In January, we're recording Ethel Smyth's witty comedy The Boatswain's Mate - never before recorded in its entirety, and now conducted by Odaline de la Martinez, who needs little or no introduction as a champion of Smyth's work. Smyth herself re-scored the opera for chamber ensemble, and it's this version that's being done - and it was the version done at the Luzerner Theater production back in February 2014, to packed audiences. It's highly accessible - she used nursery rhymes, folk melodies, her own 'March of the Women' and a quote from Beethoven's 5th. Lovely music and enormous fun. If anyone's got a set of the 78s that she recorded in 1917, please let me know!
In April, we're recording Loder's Raymond and Agnes. It's loosely based on part of Lewis's Gothic novel The Monk - stunning music, and an incredibly dramatic Act 2 finale, with a wonderful quintet. Its early performances were marred by poor performances - that's clear from the reviews - but it was done at Cambridge in 1966, though the libretto was thought lost at the time - now it's been re-discovered, so this recording will present all the music in its full glory (and it really is glorious). The Oriel Trust has issued the broadcasts of it, which really whet the appetite. It's being recorded by the Bath Philharmonia (appropriate since Loder came of a family of musicians from Bath) conducted by Jason Thornton.
These projects cost a huge amount of money though - it's an all-professional band in both cases. Please consider making a donation - more details on the website - and be part of making the recordings happen.
contact@retrospectopera.org.uk