Abstract
Originally issued on the Conifer Classics label, this CD release represented the first – and until recently, the only – of Ethel Smyth’s (1858–1944) six operas commercially available in a modern recording. It is eminently fitting that it should be The Wreckers that was afforded the distinction, at the BBC Proms in 1994, of commemorating the 50th anniversary of the composer’s death: arguably the greatest of her operas, it was certainly her most ambitious and monumental, having been her only three-act stage work and requiring significantly larger musical resources than any of the others.