The Wreckers
‘The storm is coming…'. Would you die for what you believe?
Performance Dates
About the opera
Would you die for what you believe?
In a remote corner of Cornwall, a God-fearing community lives a desperate, precarious existence. Their only hope is the ships that are wrecked on their rocks. But when they start to cause those shipwrecks deliberately, murdering the crew for profit, it tears the villagers apart, setting in motion a tragedy that kills two of their own.
This powerful, psychological drama of ‘wrecking, religion and love’ was the pinnacle of Ethel Smyth’s career – a work Sir Thomas Beecham praised as a ‘masterpiece’, admired by Mahler. With its sweeping musical soundscapes, passionate central love story, and radical interrogation of fear, hypocrisy and mob violence, it’s not only the missing link in the history of English opera – an ancestor to Britten’s Peter Grimes – but a compelling piece of theatre, whose heroine is a mirror of her fascinating, unorthodox creator.
Directed by Melly Still, this new production will be the first major, professional staging of our lifetime, and the first opportunity to hear the opera as Smyth intended, with its original French libretto. Glyndebourne’s music director Robin Ticciati conducts.
A new production for Festival 2022. Sung in French with English supertitles
Join us on Saturday 21 May for a fanfare opening night – including a free glass of Nyetimber Wines before the curtain goes up for the first time this summer.
Fanfares
One the opening night of The Wreckers we presented four fanfares, composed by our Balancing the Score composers, and performed by players from the London Philharmonic Orchestra:
- Anna Appleby, ‘To the Shore’ – Fanfare for 3 Trumpets (performed by the lake)
- Cecilia Livingston, ‘Fanfare for The Wreckers‘ – Fanfare for 4 horns (performed on the croquet lawn)
- Ailie Robertson, ‘Fanfare’ inspired by The Wreckers – Fanfare for 3 trombones (performed in front of the Organ Room)
- Ninfea Crutwell-Reade, ‘Fanfare for the Glyndebourne Festival’ – Fanfare for flugelhorn, horn, tuba and tenor drums (performed in the Figaro Garden)
Videos
Creative team
Conductor
Robin Ticciati
Director
Melly Still
Designer
Ana Inés Jabares-Pita
Choreographer
Mike Ashcroft
Lighting Designer
Malcolm Rippeth
Video Designer
Akhila Krishnan
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Leader
Pieter Schoeman
Organ
Matthew Fletcher
The Glyndebourne Chorus
Chorus Director
Aidan Oliver
Cast includes
Tallan
Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts
Jacquet
Marta Fontanals-Simmons
Harvey
Donovan Singletary
Pasko
Philip Horst
Avis
Lauren Fagan
Laurent
James Rutherford
Thurza
Karis Tucker
Marc
Rodrigo Porras Garulo
Dancers
Rosie Bell, Lucy Burns, Tash Chu, Sirena Tocco
Assistant Conductor
Johann Stuckenbruck
Music Preparation
Matthew Fletcher
Steven Maughan
Harry Rylance
Language Coach
Florence Daguerre de Hureaux
Assistant Directors
Oliver Platt
Donna Stirrup
Video Associate and Programmer
Iain Syme
Assistant to the Choreographer
Ruby Portus
Supertitles
Melly Still
Music
This 2022 edition of The Wreckers was researched and typeset by Martyn Bennett, Head of Music Library and Resources at Glyndebourne, using the 1906 Breitkopf & Härtel French/German vocal score and a manuscript French full score in a copyist’s hand, both at the British Library, the latter of immense importance in being the only version of the original full score that could be found. With no indication of it having been used for performance, it is marked up with emendations (and a new German translation) for what would be the 1916 Universal Edition English/German score, as generally used for performances thereafter, the cuts and revisions probably those sanctioned by the composer for the 1909 Covent Garden production.
In reconstituting the original uncut and unrevised opera, including some 20-30 minutes of music almost certainly not previously heard (and for which no English translation had been made), while most of the cuts in the marked-up full score had been crossed out with pencil, some pages had been removed, hence the need for those more substantial missing fragments to be orchestrated à la Smyth – a task undertaken by Tom Poster. Special thanks to him and to the British Library.
The Wreckers is available to support from £5000+
Join a Production Circle or Syndicate
Contact our Director of Development, Helen McCarthy – helen.mccarthy@glyndebourne.com
Illustration © Katie Ponder
