A Century Old, Plus, But an Astounding Addition to the Repertoire

What was it like to take in a U.S. premiére of a little-known opera — specifically, Ethel Smyth’s dramatic 1904 “The Wreckers”? 

At Bard SummerScape’s opening-night performance last Friday, there were surprises and delights aplenty.

Some of that owes to the opera’s novelty; like many opera-goers, I have seen more “Carmens” and “Bohemes” than I care to admit. Encountering a brand-new production of a neglected work is both challenging and immensely rewarding. That this work emanated from one of the few female composers of her time, a woman who was an iconoclast and activist, added to the anticipatory frisson.

First, the music: Astounding. Though clearly influenced by Wagner and Debussy among others, in “The Wreckers” Smyth carved out a musical style all her own, steeped in late-Romanticism, tinged with impressionism and verging on primitivism. Leon Botstein, who conducted the American Symphony Orchestra at the performance, calls her music “muscular,” an apt word.

At times the libretto, translated from a French novel, was a bit clunky, but Smyth’s music rose above it and created tremendous dramatic tension. The story is somewhat more problematic, a strange melding of a melodramatic love quadrangle with abstract notions of religion, sin, betrayal and punishment. (“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” would be a good sound bite for the plot.)

 “The Wreckers” were real-life communities living on the coast of England that lured ships onto the rocks, murdered the crew and lived off the booty. In the opera, two illicit lovers defy  this strange cult and attempt to warn ships off.

As for Bard’s production, directed by Thadeus Strassberger, let us allow that anything new and as ambitious as “The Wreckers” is going to take time to break in, so to speak. For it was not an unalloyed triumph. Erhard Rom’s sets were overworked by half, filling the stage with dozens of stacked wooden crates and forcing the performers to traverse the stage with caution. Much of the blocking seemed static and hemmed in by the sets, and the pacing was inconsistent.

The musicians, however, were on point: the soloists powered through their Wagnerian parts, and the chorus and orchestra carried the heart of the production. At the end of the day, Bard had won the argument. “The Wreckers” deserves a place in the mainstream operatic repertoire.

“The Wreckers” runs at Bard’s Fisher Center through Aug. 2. For tickets, Call 845-758-7900.