Until recently, Ethel Smyth was mostly a character – and what a character! – from the history books: bisexual composer and suffragette, briefly sent to Holloway Prison in 1912 for smashing windows during a pro-suffrage demonstration, she had a late-life crush on Virginia Woolf. Admirers of her music included Gustav Mahler and Queen Victoria.
Modern performances of her work have been intermittent but that may be changing. This year, Glyndebourne staged her 1909 opera The Wreckers, and Grimeborn, Dalston’s grittier alternative to Glyndebourne, presented her The Boatswain’s Mate. Meanwhile this year’s Proms offer a single performance of the Glyndebourne, The Wreckers and four other works.
