Michael Tilson Thomas, Ethel Smyth's The Wreckers

Music Matters

Kate Molleson visits Glyndebourne Festival Opera to hear about its new production of Ethel Smyth’s ‘The Wreckers’ – the first major staging of this tale of a hostile coastal community in many, many years, heard, as the composer intended, with its original French libretto. This new edition of the opera was researched and typeset by Martyn Bennett, Head of Music Library and Resources at Glyndebourne, using source material from the original score, with missing fragments orchestrated by Tom Poster, and additional help from the British Library.

‘Briefly: A Delicious Life’ is a new novel by the writer Nell Stevens, a ghost story based around Fryderyk Chopin and his partner – the French novelist – George Sand, set in a monastery retreat in Mallorca. Kate meets the author to discover more about this tale of love, creativity and sexuality.

The folk singer Angeline Morrison, writer and broadcaster Kevin Le Gendre and folk singer and academic Fay Hield all join Kate to discuss the overlooked black history in English folk music.

And Tom Service meets conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, recovering from major surgery, still working, and in the UK recently to continue his long association with London Symphony Orchestra.