Four women conductors lead the Met Opera in one week – in historic first

8 May 2024, 12:28

Since its inception in the early 1880s up until just a few years ago, the Met Opera had only hosted four women to conduct. Two weeks ago, four trailblazing women turned this pattern on its head – all of them conducting the Met in one landmark week.

Conductors Oksana Lyniv, Speranza Scappucci, Marin Alsop and Xian Zhang made history this year – by passing the Met baton back and forth, in the span of just a week.

For the first 133 years in the Metropolitan Opera’s history, the company only hosted four women conductors. In a historic first for the organisation, four women conductors led the company in just one week, from 19 to 26 April.

It all started on Friday 19 April, when Lyniv led Puccini’s Turandot. The following day, Scappucci conducted a different Puccini opera, La rondine. Alsop was in the pit three days later for the Met premiere of John Adams’ El Niño on Tuesday 23 April, and Zhang took the reins for another Puccini – Madama Butterfly on Friday 26 April.

The four leading conductors achieved this milestone without any historical precedent to guide them. When Susanna Mälkki made her Met debut in 2016, she became just the fourth woman conductor in the company’s centuries-long history – after Sarah Caldwell, who debuted in 1976, Simone Young in 1996 and Jane Glover in 2013. There are now 14 women who have conducted at the Met, including Keri-Lynn Wilson, who is married to general manager, Peter Gelb.

“There’s been a deliberate effort by major companies to create more opportunities for female conductors and I think it was overdue,” Gelb said. “Opera is changing, and it’s changing for the better by embracing a wider range of talents, both on the stage and in the pit.”

“Maybe I’ll say it because they’re probably a bit too shy to say,” Alsop, the oldest member of the four, said in an interview with the Associated Press. “It has to not be unusual for it to be part of the fabric. It takes a long time for society to get comfortable with different things, and our industry is very conservative.”

“[It’s] because of MeToo,” she said of the movement that began in 2017. “It’s not as though everyone became enlightened suddenly. It had to get instigated. It had to catch fire. It’s no good to have one. You have to have a plethora.”

Read more: Who is Marin Alsop? The trailblazing American conductor, music director and mentor

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“It’s like a different woman conductor arrived in New York simultaneously,” Lyniv agreed. “Now I can say it’s much easier to build a career than 20 years ago, 25 years ago, when I was a student and just started.”

All four women are pioneers of their craft, each of them boasting a plethora of ‘firsts’ for women in music. The first woman to be named music director of an Italian symphony orchestra? Xian Zhang. The first female conductor to be named principal guest conductor at the Royal Opera House? Speranza Scappucci. The first female conductor ever to conduct at the Bayreuth Festival? Oksana Lyniv. The first woman to win the prestigious Koussevitzky Prize for conducting? Marin Alsop.

In addition to leading orchestras and opera companies across the world, they also champion education initiatives to inspire young musicians. In 2016, Lyniv founded the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine. Alsop started a conducting fellowship in 2002 that awards $25,000 and has assisted 36 women conductors.

“It’s a good moment, but I also am cognizant of what’s going on in the world around us and how women’s rights are taken away overnight, and that happens all the time,” Alsop said. “So, we have to really remain strong and vigilant about the future generations.”