Music: Authoressed Opera

Few women have made a name in music as composers, fewer still as operatic composers. The only authoressed opera ever produced at the Metropolitan Opera House, Englishwoman Ethel Smyth's Der Wald, fizzled after two performances in 1903. But last week a onetime Metropolitan contralto-turned-composer was making a valiant try.

Back in 1910, when blonde, Pennsylvania-born Florence Wickham was singing Ortrud in Lohengrin and Emilia in Otello at the Met, she never thought of composing an opera herself. Twenty-five years later, long after she had married and retired, she wrote a musical adaptation of As You Like It. Sponsored by her friend, Mrs....

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