Dame Ethel Mary Smyth was an English composer and a member of the women's suffrage movement. Her compositions include songs, works for piano, chamber music, orchestral works, choral works and operas.
Rutland Boughton was an English composer who became well known in the early 20th century as a composer of opera and choral music. He was also an influential communist activist within the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB).
Sir Eugene Aynsley Goossens was an English conductor and composer.
Eugène Goossens was a French-born conductor and violinist.
Charles Courtice Pounds, better known by the stage name Courtice Pounds, was an English singer and actor known for his performances in the tenor roles of the Savoy Operas with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and his later roles in Shakespeare plays and Edwardian musical comedies.
Frederic William Austin was an English baritone singer, a musical teacher and composer in the period 1905–30. He is best remembered for his restoration and production of The Beggar's Opera by John Gay and Johann Christoph Pepusch, its sequel, Polly, in 1920–23, and for his popularization of the melody of the carol The Twelve Days of Christmas. Austin was the older brother of the composer Ernest Austin (1874–1947).
Liza Lehmann was an English soprano and composer, known for her vocal compositions.
The Wreckers is an opera in three acts, composed by Dame Ethel Smyth to a libretto in French by Henry Brewster. After spending considerable energy in trying to get the work performed in French, the first performance took place in a German translation by John Bernhoff, under the title of Strandrecht, at the Neues Theater, Leipzig on 11 November 1906. Smyth persisted in her attempts to see it staged elsewhere, but it was not until the conductor Thomas Beecham championed the work that a complete, staged performance was achieved in England in 1909 with funding support from her friend Mary Dodge.
"The March of the Women" is a song composed by Ethel Smyth in 1910, to words by Cicely Hamilton. It became the official anthem of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) and more widely the anthem of the women's suffrage movement throughout the United Kingdom and elsewhere. Activists sang it not only at rallies but also in prison while they were on hunger strike. Smyth produced a number of different arrangements of the work.
Odaline de la Martinez is a Cuban-American composer and conductor, currently residing in the UK. She is the artistic director of Lontano, a London-based contemporary music ensemble which she co-founded in 1976 with New Zealander flautist Ingrid Culliford, and was the first woman to conduct at the BBC Promenade Concerts in 1984. As well as frequent appearances as a guest conductor with leading orchestras throughout Great Britain, including all the BBC orchestras, she has conducted several leading ensembles around the world, including the Ensemble 2e2m in Paris; the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra; the Australian Youth Orchestra; the OFUNAM and the Camerata of the Americas in Mexico; and the Vancouver Chamber Orchestra. She is also known as a broadcaster for BBC Radio and Television and has recorded extensively for several labels.
Ethel Liggins was a British pianist, conductor and composer. A student of Theodor Leschetizky, she became widely known as the ‘Paderewski of woman pianists’ and established herself as one of the first female conductors.
Frederick Baring Ranalow was an Irish baritone who was distinguished in opera, oratorio, and musical theatre, but whose name is now principally associated with the role of Captain Macheath in the ballad opera The Beggar's Opera, which he sang close to 1,500 times. He was also a minor film actor and writer of songs.
Herbert Heyner was a noted English baritone. Heyner appeared in a handful of operas, and a number of broadcast operas, but his stage appearances were predominantly in oratorio and songs. He sang in some notable performances of Sir Edward Elgar's oratorios under the composer's baton. He sang in Britain, France, Germany, the United States and Canada, and he sang at The Proms 59 times between 1909 and 1937, in songs and operatic arias.
Fantasio is an opera in two acts composed by Ethel Smyth. The German-language libretto was written by Smyth and Henry Bennet Brewster. Described in the libretto as a phantastische Comödie, it was based on Alfred de Musset's 1834 play of the same name. The opera premiered at the Deutsches Nationaltheater in Weimar on 24 May 1898.
The Mass in D by Ethel Smyth is a setting of the mass ordinary for vocal soloists, chorus and orchestra.
Fête Galante is an opera in one act composed by Ethel Smyth to an English-language libretto by Smyth and Edward Shanks based on Maurice Baring's 1909 short story of the same name. It is a tale of late night fête galante involving aristocrats and a commedia dell'arte troupe where jealousy, desire, and multiple masquerades end in the death of one of the characters. Described by the composer as a "Dance-dream", the opera premiered on 4 June 1923 at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre.
Entente Cordiale is a comic opera in one act by Ethel Smyth with an English-language libretto by Smyth, who describes the work as "a post-war comedy in one act ". It was first performed by students at the Royal College of Music in London on 22 July 1925.
This is a summary of 1926 in music in the United Kingdom.
This is a summary of 1906 in music in the United Kingdom.
