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Ethel Smyth

Ethel Smyth

Born: 22nd April 1858, Sidcup, UK

Died: 8th May 1944, Woking, UK

Nationality: English

Dame Ethel Mary Smyth was an English composer and a member of the women's suffrage movement. Her compositions include songs, works for piano, chamber music, orchestral works, choral works and operas.

Smyth tended to be marginalised as a "woman composer", as though her work could not be accepted as mainstream. Yet when she produced more delicate compositions, they were criticised for not measuring up to the standard of her male peers. She was the first female composer granted a damehood.

Further Reading: Smyth

  • Ethel Smyth

    22nd May 2024by David Smith

    A selection of some of the best recordings of music by the late Romantic composer, known for her groundbreaking operas, her solo songs, and her fearless involvement in the suffragette movement.

  • John Andrews on Ethel Smyth's Der Wald

    11th Sep 2023by Katherine Cooper

    The conductor discusses the first-ever recording of Smyth's second opera - a deliciously dark fairy-tale in one act, which was premiered in Berlin in 1902 and subsequently transferred to the Metropolitan Opera.

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