Ethel Smyth

Dame Ethel Mary Smyth was a British composer and one of the first professional female composers of modern Europe. In 1877, at the age of 19, she used a hunger strike to persuade her parents to let her study composition. Despite the resistance to female composers at the time, several of her works were premiered at major concert halls. Her opera The Forest was reportedly the only opera by a female composer performed at New York’s Metropolitan Opera for more than 100 years.