Culture

How Composer Ethel Smyth Made Opera History

One of a Kind

She was a militant suffragette and lesbian, and to this day is the only female composer to have had a work performed at New York’s Met Opera. Inside her amazing life.

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In March 1912, composer, lesbian and militant suffragette Ethel Smyth stood clutching her handbag in front of the Berkeley Square home of the colonial secretary, Lewis Harcourt, in London.

“Oh constable,” she politely asked the policeman on guard duty, “perhaps you could tell me who lives at this address?”

She then removed...

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