Cantori New York Premieres Dame Ethel Smyth's THE PRISON This Weekend
By: BWW News Desk May. 14, 2016
This weekend, May 14 & 15, Cantori New York, an award winning chamber choir celebrating its 31st season, will perform the U.S. Premiere of "The Prison", written in 1930 by feminist composer Dame Ethel Smyth. Mark Shapiro, Artistic Director, will conduct the piece. A "vocal symphony" in one act for choir, soloists, piano and bugle, with libretto by H.B. Brewster, "The Prison" is a unique and complex philosophical drama - a dialogue between a man and his soul. The program will also include Brahms' Marienlieder song cycle.
Featured soloists and accompaniment include Theo Hoffman, baritone, Chelsea Morris, soprano, and Jason Wirth, piano. Hoffman was a finalist for the 2016 National Council auditions for the Metropolitan Opera.
Performances of Dame Ethel's work are extremely rare, even in her native Britain, and although she was a Dame Commander of the British Empire (the first female composer to a damehood.) Smythe received a flurry of attention in February of this year for another of her firsts- it was announced that her "streak" as the first and only female composer to stage an opera at the Metropolitan Opera would be ending. (Smyth's "Der Wald" was performed in 1903; Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho's "L'Amour de Loin" will be performed during the 2016 season).
Dame Ethel Smyth was highly regarded by her fellow composers in her day, including Brahms, Mendelssohn, and Robert and Clara Schumann. In addition to composing, she wrote four books and many essays on women's equality. Her portrait was sketched by John Singer Sargent, and she was professionally (and romantically) aligned with many high profile women of her day fighting for women's rights. Letters between Dame Ethel and Virginia Woolf reveal a complicated and passionate relationship. Yet, contemporaneous critics panned her performances, and she could not break through what she referred to as a "machine" of sexist institutions and venues who refused to show her work.
While there have been some regional revivals of her operas "The Wreckers" and "Der Wald", "The Prison" is a rarity among rarities. (Thankfully, Maestro Shapiro was gifted a copy of the score from the historian Elizabeth Wood upon her hearing his conducting of the NYC premiere of Dame Ethel's Mass in D.) " The Prison" is a treasure for fans of feminist history, music history, and of adventurous music you won't hear anywhere else. This performance is not to be missed.
Details:
Saturday, May 14, 2016, 8:00 p.m. & Sunday, May 15, 2016, 7:00 p.m.
Church of St. Luke in the Fields
487 Hudson Street, New York City
Tickets: $25 Adult/$20 Senior/$5 Student or Child
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