
- CD1 - tracks 1-16 - Act I (57.36)
- CD2 - tracks 1-14 - Acts II and III (70:23)
- The cast is:
Looking back on Ethel Smyth’s career in 1944, Sir Thomas Beecham declared: ‘Undoubtedly
her masterpiece is The Wreckers,
which remains one of the three or four English operas
of real musical merit and vitality written during the past forty
years’.
The Wreckers, premiered in 1906, represents, in Nigel Burton’s
evocative formula, ‘a halfway stage between
Tristan and
Peter Grimes’; in fact, it
anticipates so much in the latter opera that some critics have concluded
Britten was inspired by Smyth’s work.
The Wreckers
still impresses as an
extraordinarily resonant opera, exploring the relationship between religious
fanaticism and violence and the fate of those enlightened spirits prepared
to defy cruel customs sanctioned by tradition. Smyth’s surging, restless
score, with the Cornish sea always in the background, carries complete
dramatic conviction and rises into peaks of radiant beauty. This is a
reissue of Odaline De La Martinez’s acclaimed 1994 recording with the BBC
Philharmonic, originally released on Conifer Classics.
Lawrence - David Wilson-Johnson
Harvey - Brian Bannatyne-Scott
Tallan - Anthony Boden
Jack - Annemarie Sand
Mark - Justin Lavender
Thirza - Anne-Marie Owens
Avis - Judith Howarth
A Man - Brian Bannatyne-Scott
Huddersfield Choral Society
The BBC Philharmonic, conducted by Odaline de la Martinez.
- The 60-page booklet includes the full libretto, the original essay, synopsis and a new foreword by Christopher Wiley.