Abstract
Dame Ethel Smyth (1858–1944) was a pathbreaking composer of immense importance to the revitalisation of British traditions of music composition in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Boatswain’s Mate is one of six operas she wrote between the 1890s and 1920s, which collectively stand at the pinnacle of a sizeable output that also includes her Mass in D, double concerto for violin and horn, her oratorio The Prison, and other orchestral, chamber, and vocal works. In later years she increasingly struggled with deafness, leading her to develop a ‘second string’ as an author of several books of memoirs, biographical sketches, and polemics on the music profession.