The Wreckers (opera) her friend Mary Dodge. Describing the opera in the "New Grove Dictionary", Stephen Banfield notes "Its greatest strength is in its dramatic strategy, strikingly prophetic of (Britten's) "Peter Grimes" in details such as the offstage church service set against the foreground confrontation in Act 1." However, Amanda Holden makes the point that, musically, Smyth is "no Wagnerite, she makes use of his motivic technique, while the texture, orchestration, and even some of the music's dramatic density, show knowledge of the works of Richard Strauss ... but it also slips too readily into operatic convention." Old tales of Cornish villages where,
Peter Grimes present, make it clear that they think Grimes is guilty and deserving of punishment. Although the coroner, Mr Swallow, determines the boy's death to be accidental and clears Grimes without a proper trial, he advises Grimes not to get another apprentice—a proposal against which Grimes vigorously protests. As the court is cleared, Ellen Orford, the schoolmistress whom Grimes wishes to marry as soon as he gains the Borough's respect, attempts to comfort Grimes as he rages against what he sees as the community's unwillingness to give him a true second chance. The same, some days later After the first orchestral