About the work
Opera in one act by Ethel Smyth to her own German-language libretto, first performed on 9 April 1902 at the Royal Court Opera in Berlin. It is Smyth's only stage work in German.
Plot
The late-Romantic music drama is set in a medieval forest: the powerful and domineering Iolanthe desires the young woodcutter Heinrich, who is engaged to the peasant girl Röschen. When he rejects her, she has him falsely accused of poaching and driven to his death, while forest spirits frame the action at either end.
Cultural significance
Following its premiere at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in March 1903, Der Wald remained the only opera by a woman composer staged at that house for more than a century – a second one followed only in 2016, with Kaija Saariaho's L'Amour de loin.