Readers may recall that, at the beginning of this past February, Clerestory presented a program entitled Suffragist: Music Celebrating Women Trailblazers. While the selections were chosen to celebrate the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, whose adoption was certified on August 26, 1920, the program also included the “March of the Women” by Ethel Smyth. The Women’s Social and Political Union, the leading suffragist organization in Britain, took this march as their anthem; and Smyth was active in their movement. Indeed, she was one of about 100 women sentenced to Holloway Prison following a protest in 1912 that involved damage due to stone-throwing.
courtesy of Naxos of America
Political imprisonment was thus very much on Smyth’s mind in practice, rather than just in theory. It should thus be no surprise that her favorite opera was Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 72 opera Fidelio. While this literary theme did not figure in any of the operas that she wrote, her last major composition, written between 1929 and 1930, was a cantata for soprano, bass, choir, and orchestra entitled The Prison. Her libretto was prepared by Henry Bennet Brewster, who may well have been her only male lover. (Smyth’s stronger passions were directed at, among others, Emmeline Pankhurst and Virginia Woolf, although neither relationship is likely to have proceeded beyond friendship.) The narrative of the cantata, as such, involved the reflections of a prisoner (the baritone) and his dialog with his soul (the soprano).
If Clerestory “invited” Smyth into its centennial celebration, then Chandos Records, based in England, initiated its own celebration by releasing a recording of The Prison this past Friday. The conductor is James Blachly leading his Experiential Orchestra and Chorus. The prisoner is sung by bass-baritone Dashon Burton, joined by soprano Sarah Brailey in the role of his soul.
In many respects The Prison is an early twentieth-century reflection on the late nineteenth-century traditions that influenced Smyth’s music education. Her primary instructor was Heinrich von Herzogenberg, better known for his relationship with Johannes Brahms, rather than his own music. In the opera world she is best known for The Wreckers, which was the first opera by a woman composer to be produced by the Metropolitan Opera. It took more than a century before the Met produced its second such opera, L’Amour de loin (love from afar) by Kaija Saariaho, which was first performed at the Metropolitan Opera House in December of 2016. However, Smyth’s catalog of secular choral music is somewhat more extensive than that of her operas; and there is very much as sense that The Prison is a “culminating statement” in both the genre and her overall repertoire.
While this album provided my first encounter with both Blachly and Brailey, Burton has become familiar to San Francisco audiences. Indeed, he played a significant role in the launch of the 39th season of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra (PBO) & Chorale this past October. His contribution to Caroline Shaw’s “The Listeners” subsequently found its way to the Shaw album released by Philharmonia Baroque Productions at the beginning of April. The Prison allowed me to experience Burton’s talents in a repertoire decidedly different from the PBO repertoire, and I was highly impressed with the lyricism he brought to his role as the prisoner. Indeed, given Smyth’s influences, I would welcome an opportunity to listen to Burton’s solo work in a performance of Brahms’ Opus 45 A German Requiem. Until then, I shall just have to enjoy subsequent listenings of this new Smyth album.
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