The Wreckers: blazing performances bring this English curio out of the shadows

Prepare to be knocked sideways. Famous for being so rarely performed, passionately admired by its advocates and resolutely ignored by most of the operatic world, Ethel Smyth’s pioneering 1903 opera The Wreckers has finally come to Glyndebourne. The totally committed staging is by Melly Still: it makes the best possible case for the piece. But does it establish it as a classic?

It’s set on the bleak coast of Cornwall in the 18th century, atmospherically evoked by Ana Inés Jabares-Pita’s grey design and Akhila Krishnan’s looming video designs of the turbulent sea. You have to admire the opera’s amoral daring: the wreckers of the title are the local community who, in deep poverty, scavenge for the remains of ships that have run aground. However, inspired by religious righteousness, they have gone further, suppressing the guiding light of the lighthouse in order to encourage these shipwrecks and the deaths of those aboard.

Those who try to subvert this situation, by lighting beacons to guide the ships to safety, are regarded as traitors. The battlelines are drawn as the violent villagers gang up on possible suspects and condemn them to death in a watery cave. Cue the relentlessly strident choruses that are among the more effective parts of Smyth’s score, bitingly delivered with chilling force by the Glyndebourne Chorus.

In this turbulent scenario, the village pastor Pasko is the leader, and he is sung with compelling force and clarity by Philip Horst. His young wife is Thurza, the mellow and eloquent mezzo Karis Tucker. Her opposite number is the daughter of the lighthouse keeper Laurent (the avuncular James Rutherford), the cynical Avis: Lauren Fagan’s bright, incisive soprano dominates her scenes. Both Thurza and Avis, it emerges, love Marc, whose high tenor register challenges Rodrigo Porras Garulo to sustain an unreasonable level of passion.

There is an odd disconnect between the narrative of the wreckers and the emerging story of the love triangle: the emotional Tristan-esque love duet for Marc and Thurza dominates the second act, which is then given some balance by restoring a long aria for Pasko that seems to have been cut before the premiere (and has necessitated some skilful orchestration by Tom Poster).

Completing the musical score is one way in which Glyndebourne has attempted to be faithful to the original text of Smyth and her librettist Henry Brewster. More debatable is the decision to perform the opera in the original French. This was the language in which Brewster originally wrote it, yet Smyth believed that performances of it in England should be in English, and she translated it, mostly herself. In Germany, where it was premiered in 1906, it was in German. And so, the published score is in English and German, not French.

However, this was all in the pre-surtitle era. Still’s decision to go with the French original may be justified, possibly because it distances any potential feeling of direct aggression on the work’s part towards the Cornish people, but also because it enables him in the surtitles (which he has written himself) to sharpen up the cumbersome English text to provide some eloquent lines.

All this questions the extent to which The Wreckers is, as Smyth insistently claimed, “fiercely, exclusively English”. In fact, the music is derivatively shot through with copious, often jostling references to European opera. A swinging nationalistic theme echoes Smetana as much as English folk music; a direct crib from Bizet’s Carmen leads into sub-Wagnerian themes and motifs that wind their way through the awkward, unmemorable vocal lines, often ending with a shrieking top note.

Smyth’s attempt to create something that would be attractive to the British, lightening the idiom of her two previous Germanic operas, was a not unreasonable aim. But it leads to a confusion of tone that, added to the weaknesses in the libretto, damages the cohesion of the piece. For some of the time, though, we can overlook this, because conductor Robin Ticciati and the London Philharmonic deliver the score with such blazing eloquence and conviction. And I hope that this outstanding cast has the chance to perform it again.

But now we know: this is not “the quintessential English opera on a line between Purcell and Britten” that the programme claims, but an outlier, a compelling curiosity worth hearing – at least once.

In rep at Glyndebourne until June 24: glyndebourne.com. At the Proms on July 24; bbc.co.uk/events