The Wreckers (opera)

Les naufrageurs (The Wreckers)
Opera by Ethel Smyth
Ethel Smyth, no later than 1903
Librettist
  • Ethel Smyth
  • Henry Bennet Brewster
LanguageFrench
Premiere
11 November 1906 (1906-11-11)
Neues Theater, Leipzig (in German)

Les naufrageurs is a French-language opera in three acts composed by Dame Ethel Smyth to a libretto by Henry Brewster, telling of the plundering of ships by Cornish villagers. Completed in 1904, it was premiered in 1906 in Leipzig in a German translation, with cuts, before being championed by Sir Thomas Beecham and given performances in 1909 in London, now in an English translation as The Wreckers prepared by the composer herself. Les naufrageurs was not performed in the language for which its music was composed until 2022, at Glyndebourne and in Berlin.