ETHEL SMYTH (1854-1944), the English composer. Pioneering suffragette, imprisoned for throwing rocks through the windows of the Houses of Parliament, and first woman composer to receive a Damehood.
Ethel Smyth’s early composing dates from Leipzig where she had taken herself off to study, defying her father who forbade her to study music but lost every battle he picked. It was not until her 50s that she found fame, both in Britain and here in the States, where in 1903 she had become the first woman to have an opera premiered at the Met. . And in fact the only woman, for over a century, because it was a record that was broken only by Kaija Saariaho in 2016…
Presented by composer Joan Tower for International Women’s Month in March, written and produced by Charlotte Wilson for WMHT
