The Boatswain’s Mate

Dame Ethel Smyth (1858-1944) was born to a strict military family in which she was introduced to music and composition as ladylike activities suited to her position in society. As a teenager, however, she became determined to pursue music as a career and went on a prolonged hunger-strike to persuade her formidable father to allow her to study in Leipzig . Her operas included Fantasio and The Wreckers, and she also found success with orchestral and choral works such as her enduringly popular Mass in D (1891) – as well as providing the anthem for the suffragette movement, The March of the Women. A prominent suffragette, Smyth met and fell in love with Emmeline Pankhurst (buried next to the Finborough Theatre in Brompton Cemetery ) in 1910 and dedicated two years to the suffragette movement as political activist and its unofficial composer. She spent several weeks imprisoned in Holloway for the cause. Later in life, Smyth fought for political causes such as a subsidized national opera for England and the rights of female orchestral musicians. In 1922, she became a D.B.E.

Written in 1914 and unseen in London for more than 50 years, The Boatswain’s Mate is Smyth’s fourth and most obviously feminist opera. A witty and inventive battle of the sexes, it features a feisty heroine – supposedly based on Emmeline Pankhurst – who outwits her suitors in a series of entertaining and resourceful deceptions. Mrs Waters is a wealthy widow whose first husband has left her with a country pub and a determination never to remarry. When the retired boatswain George Benn devises a scheme to win her hand by ‘saving’ her from a burglar whom he has in fact paid to break in, he reckons without her bravery and quick-wittedness.

The first production in Primavera’s three-month residency at the Finborough Theatre, The Boatswain’s Mate will be a fully costumed production-without-décor, opening on 17 June for five Sunday and Monday performances as part of the multi-award-winning Finborough Theatre’s [ rediscoveries season 2007 ] and their acclaimed sell-out thefinboroughgaieties – Celebrating British Music Theatre series.

The Boatswain’s Mate
Sunday, 17 June and Monday 18 June; Sunday, 24 June 2007; Sunday, 1 July and Monday, 2 July 2007 , 8.00pm
Finborough Theatre, The Finborough, London
www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk