4 women who conducted at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in landmark week talk progress in a ‘very conservative’ industry
- Marin Alsop, Xian Zhang, Speranza Scappucci and Oksana Lyniv conducted at the Met Opera in April; in its first 133 years, only 4 women wielded a baton there
- Alsop, the most senior, says although this is ‘a good moment’ for women conductors, vigilance is needed to make sure their rights aren’t ‘taken away overnight’
Oksana Lyniv, Speranza Scappucci, Marin Alsop and Xian Zhang filled their lockers in the guest conductors’ dressing room off the Metropolitan Opera’s orchestra pit. All four took the baton in a landmark week from April 19-26.
Just four women had led the New York orchestra between 1883 and 2016.
“Maybe I’ll say it because they’re probably a bit too shy to say,” says Alsop who, at 67, is the senior member of the group. “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.”
Lyniv conducted Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot on April 19, and Scappucci conducted Puccini’s La Rondine the following day.
Alsop was in the pit for the Met premiere of John Adams’ El Niño on April 23, and Zhang conducted Puccini’s Madama Butterfly on April 26.
It’s not as though everyone became enlightened suddenly. It had to get instigated. It had to catch fire
“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,” Lyniv says.
Lyniv had been pushed to reconsider her career, even by her family.
“There are no examples of successful female conductors,” she recalls being told. “Maybe you will conduct maximum a school orchestra or church choirs.”
When Susanna Mälkki made her Met debut in 2016, she became just the fourth woman to conduct the orchestra in the company’s 133-year history after Sarah Caldwell, Simone Young and Jane Glover, who debuted in 1976, 1996 and 2013 respectively.
The total has risen to 14 women, among them Keri-Lynn Wilson, the wife of Met 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 says. “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.”
Alsop says that the lack of equity hiring came into the spotlight “because of MeToo” – the social 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,” she says.
Like many musicians of her generation, Alsop was inspired by Leonard Bernstein, the first American to lead a major US orchestra.
“I saw Bernstein conduct when I was nine. I was more impressed with him talking to us, the audience, when he turned around. I remember him jumping around a lot, and I thought that was very cool,” Alsop says.
“My dad took me to the concert, and I said, ‘Oh, dad, I want to be the conductor.’ He said, ‘Great.’ [I] never changed my mind.”
Scappucci, 51, was born in Rome and accompanied her older sister to piano lessons on the ground floor of their building with their neighbour Maria Borzatti.
“After six months, the teacher called my mom and said, ‘Signora Scappucci, Gioia, she’s going to be great at languages, but I’ve observed the little one. I think she has a very good ear for music, so I’d like to teach her instead,’” the conductor recalls.
Speranza studied piano at Rome’s Conservatorio di Musica Santa Cecilia, and Juilliard, in New York, where she took a class in coaching singers.
Valued for her Italian background, she was hired by American companies as a coach. She became Riccardo Muti’s assistant to the Salzburg Festival, then moved into conducting and from 2017-22 was music director of Belgium’s Opéra Royal de Wallonie.
I was so naive. Because I saw them working so much, I never thought this is very unusual
Lyniv, 46, was born in Ukraine to a family of musicians. She studied piano and flute. At 18, she had to conduct the student orchestra as part of the curriculum. A retired professor walked up to her.
“He said to me: ‘You are not a Toscanini, but you have a great future,’” she recalls, a reference to conducting great Arturo Toscanini.
Lyniv finished third at the 2004 Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition. She attended the Dresden Academy of Music, became an assistant at Odesa’s National Theatre, in Ukraine, then Russian conductor Kirill Petrenko’s assistant at the Bavarian State Opera.
Born in China, Zhang started playing piano at three years old but at 16 was told by a teacher that her hands were too small.
She went to Beijing’s Central Conservatory of Music and at 19 was invited by a teacher to step in to conduct Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro with the China National Opera Orchestra. Two of her three conducting teachers back then were women.
“I was so naive. Because I saw them working so much, I never thought this is very unusual,” Zhang says. “Much later, I realised that’s not the case.”
She attended the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music in the US, won the Maazel/Vilar International Conductors’ Competition in 2002, and was hired as the New York Philharmonic’s assistant conductor and later as an associate.
Zhang became music director of the Sioux City Symphony Orchestra, in the state of Iowa, from 2005-07, and held the same position at the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi from 2009-16. She has directed the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra since 2016.
“It’s a good moment but I also am cognisant 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 says. “So we have to really remain strong and vigilant about the future generations.”
