1. “The Wreckers”
September 30 at Avery Fisher Hall
Dame Ethel Smyth counted Brahms, Grieg, and Britten among her friends. Her 1906 opera—considered a precursor to Britten’s modern masterwork, Peter Grimes—now gets the grand presentation it deserves.
2. “Julia”
September 26 and 29 at Symphony Space
Julia Ward Howe may be called “one-note Julia” for her single famed work—“The Battle Hymn of the Republic”—but composer Henry Papale gets quite a few more into this opera about Howe and her devotion to Civil War–era radicalism.