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FULL FÊTE GALANTE (Ethel Smyth) A Queer Opera Hfmt Hamburg 2026 Amy Buttschardt, Kristīne Matvejeva, Martina Daguerre
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: FÊTE GALANTE
- Composer: Smyth Ethel
- Libretto: Ethel Smyth and the war poet Edward Shanks Libretto Text, Libretto Index
- Venue & Opera Company: Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg, Germany
- Recorded: March 20, 2026
- Type: Staged Opera Live
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
The palace at night. A festive evening gathering. Pierrot stands at the bittersweet heart of the glittering festivities. Yet, amidst the web of romances, jealousies, and longings, Pierrot threatens to crumble under the expectations of an authoritarian court. In the spaces between, Pierrot’s multifaceted nature emerges; driven by a seductive yearning for a different kind of love, this figure becomes a thorn in the King’s side. Is it all merely a puppet show, or do the songs accompanying the pirouettes hint at an impending uprising? “These are like you, just puppets in a play.” – “Oh, what a doll can suffer!”
When it premiered in the 1920s, composer Ethel Smyth’s English-language opera was far ahead of its time, blending neo-Baroque musicality with a modern interpretation of an old tale. Now, over a century later, the HfMT Forum—featuring drag performances and a queer reading of the piece—once again becomes a stage for the revolutionary potential within Smyth’s music. FÊTE GALANTE opens up a perspective on the era beyond kings, queens, and patriarchs.
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.
Fête Galante was the fifth of Smyth’s six operas and marked a return to the genre after a seven-year gap. World War I had forced the cancellation of several performances of her works in Europe, and especially Germany where three of her earlier operas were first performed. After The Boatswain’s Mate premiered in 1916, she concentrated her efforts on the women’s suffrage movement and on her writing, producing two books of memoirs. During that time, she was suffering from depression, the onset of deafness, and a loss of confidence in her abilities as a compose