Der Wald (‘The Wood’) was the second of Ethel Smyth’s six operas and the first of her four one-acters: only Fantasio (1897 98) and her best-known, The Wreckers (1902 04), were in more than a single act. It was composed (to a libretto in German by Henry Brewster) between 1899 and 1901 and premiered in Berlin in 1902 under the baton of Karl Muck, no less. Following its successful UK premiere – in an English translation – at Covent Garden a few months later, it crossed the Atlantic to the Metropolitan Opera in New York, where it was performed the following year, and remained the only opera by a female composer staged there until the late Kaija Saariaho’s L’amour de loin over a century later (in 2016).

The scenario is relatively straightforward: a local woodsman, Heinrich (warmly sung here by Robert Murray), is betrothed to a local girl, Röschen (the radiant Natalya Romaniw), and they sing of their impending nuptials and life together. They are interrupted by the menacing Iolanthe, rumoured to be a sorceress who has the local Count in her power, who takes a shine to the handsome Heinrich, and demands he renounce Röschen and enter service rather with her in her nearby castle. Heinrich refuses, even when the deer he has illegally killed is revealed, preferring the purity of love in death to life in thrall. Iolanthe, furious, orders him executed on the spot. (Summary justice marks the denouements of The Wreckers and Smyth’s one-act Fête galante, also.) Der Wald is topped and tailed by a chorus of sylvan sprites who sing of the immutability of the forest and the transitory nature of Man.

John Andrews directs a strong performance from the BBC Symphony Orchestra, who relish Smyth’s evocative (and occasionally Wagnerian) scoring. With the BBC Singers, they support a fine cast, dominated by Claire Barnett-Jones – in recent years a rising star at English National Opera – as the heartless Iolanthe. Der Wald remains something of a curiosity, overshadowed by its greater, grander successor, The Wreckers, completed just three years later. Excellent sound.