★ ‘The Wreckers’ (Friday and Sunday) Bard College’s SummerScape festival presents the first American staging of this politically astute opera about piracy, love and betrayal on the Cornish coast by Ethel Smyth, a trailblazing composer and suffragist. Leon Botstein conducts the American Symphony Orchestra in a hard-driving reading of this score, which blends echoes of Wagner and Strauss with Edwardian choral writing. The traditional production by Thaddeus Strassberger stars the soprano Katharine Goeldner and the tenor Neal Cooper in the roles of the lovers, Thirza and Mark, with the baritones Louis Otey and Michael Mayes and the soprano Sky Ingram completing the cast of principals. Friday at 7.30 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m., Sosnoff Theater, Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y, 845-758-7900, fishercenter.bard.edu. (Schweitzer)
“Erhard Rom’s sets for Bard’s production, abetted by Hannah Wasileski’s projections and JAX Messenger’s lighting, evoke the coastline well; crates, planks of wood and sheets standing for sails litter the stage, a broken mast is seen in Act I and the projections give us the feel of the dreadful weather and harsh coast.”
Read the full review from BACHTRACK here.
