Quote from: Albion on Sunday 04 July 2010, 09:05
The chamber works are certainly worthwhile but mostly quite early, when Smyth was very much still a disciple of her beloved Brahms, and do not really showcase her individuality. Even the Mass in D, although an outstanding achievement, is largely rooted in Dvorak (another composer Smyth admired greatly). As she gained experience of the operatic stage through Der Wald and Fantasio she seemed to find her feet musically, leading to her first truly representative work The Wreckers.
Her Wreckers is a great opera. Too bad it was not staged at the Met instead of Die Wald. Nevertheless, Smyth holds the record of being the only woman to have ever been staged at the Metropolitan.