A new play opens this week that tells the story of how Smyth defied her middle class Victorian world and set off to study music in Leipzig. Winnipeg playwright Muriel Hogue sits down with Sarah Jo to tell us more about this remarkable women and this new production. Missed it? Watch the video here!
Dame Ethel Smyth's independent spirit and life style landed her in a storm of controversy. Despite the odds, she battled to have her work performed, but like many of us, this sensitive woman was blind to the obvious and paid dearly for her shortcomings.
"Because I have conducted my own operas and love sheep-dogs; because I generally dress in tweeds, and sometimes, at winter afternoon concerts, have even conducted in 
"Miss Smyth is one of the few women composers whom one can seriously consider to be achieving something valuable in the field of musical creation" - Tchaikovsky
Dame Ethel Mary Smyth was an English composer and a member of the women's suffrage movement. She was born in Sidcup, Kent, which is now in the London Borough of Bexley, as the fourth of a family of eight children. Her father, John Hall Smyth, who was a Major-General in the Royal Artillery, was very much opposed to her making a career in music.
Undeterred, Smyth was determined to become a composer, studied with a private tutor, and then attended the Leipzig Conservatory, where she studied composition with Carl Reinecke. She left after a year, however, disillusioned with the low standard of teaching, and continued her music studies privately with Heinrich von Herzogenberg. While she was at the Leipzig Conservatory, she met Dvořák, Grieg and Tchaikovsky. Through Herzogenberg she also met Clara Schumann and Brahms. Her compositions include songs, works for piano, chamber music, orchestral and concertante works, choral works, and operas.
In 1910, at the age of 52, Smyth joined the Women's Social and Political Union, a suffrage organization, giving up music for two years to devote herself to the cause. She met and fell passionately in love with Emmeline Pankhurst, the founder of the WSPU. Her "The March of the Women" (1911) became the anthem of the women's suffrage movement.
In 1912 the WSPU organised a campaign to break a window in the house of any politician who opposed votes for women. Edith vigorously participated in this and was arrested for breaking the windows of the Colonial Secretary for which she had to serve two months in Holloway prison. In prison she organised sports activities and when visited by Sir Thomas Beecham was observed conducting the inmates marching in the yard by keeping time with her toothbrush.
From 1913 onwards, Smyth began gradually to lose her hearing and managed to complete only four more major works before deafness brought her composing career to an end. However, she found a new interest in literature and, between 1919 and 1940, she published ten highly successful, mostly autobiographical, books.
In recognition of her work as a composer and writer, Smyth was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1922, becoming the first female composer to be awarded a damehood. Smyth received honorary doctorates in music from the Universities of Durham and Oxford. She died in Woking in 1944 at the age of 86.
Winnipeg's Red Hen Productions will take on the fascinating story of Smyth through PASSION: The life and loves of Dame Ethel Smyth
Written by Muriel Hogue and directed by Kelly Daniels, the play features Ian Bastin, Ntara Curry, Patricia Hunter, Lindsay Johnson, Maggie Nagle, Tracy Penner and Tom Soares.
Muriel was Sarah Jo's guest Monday afternoon in the Diamond Lane.
PASSION: The life and loves of Dame Ethel Smyth opens Thursday May 11 @ The Rachel Browne Theatre (211 Bannatyne Avenue) and runs through to May 19.
Tickets are $30 with special pricing for students and industry members.* You can get you tickets HERE
*PWYC dress rehearsal - May 10
Fri, May 3, 7:30 PM
Full-time, Permanent, Education, Technology
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