Biography
Ethel Smyth was born on 23 April 1858 in Sidcup, Kent, and won a music education at the Leipzig Conservatory against her family's opposition, studying there under Carl Reinecke and later privately with Heinrich von Herzogenberg. With the 1893 premiere of her Mass in D at the Royal Albert Hall and the operas Der Wald (1902) and The Wreckers (1906), she established herself as a composer in a field dominated by men. After the death of her longtime partner Henry Brewster, she became active in the suffrage movement from 1910, composed the suffragette anthem The March of the Women, and served two months in Holloway Prison in 1912 for a protest action. In 1922 she became the first woman composer to be made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Smyth died on 8 May 1944 in Woking.
On Stagelog
Loading stats...