Taking Up The Baton

Financial Times

London, UK

Think back 20 or 30 years. Trying to spot a female conductor in one of the world’s leading concert halls would have had almost zero chance of success. How the world has changed, with a new generation of young women conductors now rising to positions of influence.

It may be a century or more late, but the fight for equality in the conducting profession is showing results. Many organisations are playing a part, but a leading role has to be credited to the Linda and Mitch Hart Institute for Women Conductors, now five years old, at the Dallas Opera.

The programme cites an enviable success rate. Six young conductors take part each year, selected from a total of 450 applicants so far from 35 countries and every US state. Each of the graduates is working in the business and some have gone on to key positions in companies across the world.

“The Hart Institute is an affirmation of equality,” says Ian Derrer, general director and chief executive of the Dallas Opera. “It takes pride of place here, as we can see the results that have been achieved through creating opportunities and launching careers. In supporting women conductors, we are tapping into undercurrents that have long been part of Dallas culture.

“There has been significant female leadership at the heart of the Dallas community for decades, including women like Annette Strauss [first elected female mayor].”

Although the Hart Institute’s programme is relatively short, at around 10 days each year, Dallas Opera commits considerable resources to it, both in terms of finance and expertise. Crucially, it follows up with long-term support for participants. It also includes places for two to four American women opera administrators each year.

In the first two years, the focus was primarily on raising awareness of the issue. Now it is about employability. The faculty for the last programme in 2019 included not only conducting tutors and vocal coaches, but also music agents, a law expert, a PR company and advisers on artistic planning and arts company management. This is a holistic view of what a young conductor needs to make strides in the business, especially a woman setting out to work in what was for so long a men-only profession.

“There are so many steps to be taken before you go to the conductor’s podium,” says Anna Skryleva, who attended the Hart Institute in 2015 and is now general music director at Theater Magdeburg in Germany. “Normally, if you go to conducting classes, you only study musical matters, but this programme also deals with the reality of how the music business works.

“We had workshops on leadership, human resources, networking, fundraising, how to work with the media, and personal branding. Every music college should include these workshops for conductors — for men, too.”

After working for 20 years in Germany, Skryleva says she benefited from the exposure to the American system. “In the US, you have to organise your rehearsal time differently, arriving at the podium exactly on the hour. Emmanuel Villaume [Dallas Opera’s music director] said I looked too strict, as if I had worked too long in Germany. He told me to relax. There was a lot about attitude, discussions around psychological issues with experienced counsellors. The message was ‘trust yourself and you can be a conductor’, and I immediately saw a result from that when I came back to Germany.”

The roll call of alumnae includes Welsh National Opera’s first female conductor-in-residence, holders of positions in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Seattle, Perth, Thessaloniki and Romania, and two of the top 20 women conductors of 2019 as listed on the music blog Slipped Disc.

Another who has risen to prominence is Lidiya Yankovskaya, also from 2015 and now music director of Chicago Opera Theater. “It was valuable to get advice on where my career trajectory stood at that time and insight into what my skills were,” she says. “You don’t often get honest feedback from top people in our industry, and this was important in showing me where to go next.”

For Yankovskaya, it was helpful that the Hart Institute is uniquely based within an opera house. “I had done standalone conducting programmes before, but opera needs other skills beyond, such as understanding voices and logistical issues. There are so many moving parts in opera and the conductor is often at the centre of them,” she says. “Also, opera is risk-averse by nature and companies tend to hire conductors they have used before or who are similar to others they know. That makes it difficult to break through, especially in the US, where there are fewer opportunities.”

Yankovskaya and her family arrived in the US as refugees from Russia in the 1990s. Taken aback by the strength of anti-immigrant feeling during the Syrian war, she founded the Refugee Orchestra Project, providing a showcase for refugee composers and performers. That too has benefited from her increased profile.

The Hart Institute, launched originally by Keith Cerny, Dallas Opera’s former general director, is under the day-to-day supervision of the company’s director of artistic administration, David Lomeli. It is, he says, “a project I love and adore”. He describes the impact of the Hart Institute on Dallas Opera’s profile. “As a company, it has turned the eyes of the world towards us,” he says. “It is our calling card. Sometimes male graduates come up and say they don’t think we are doing anything worthwhile, but we are different from everybody else and proud of that.”

One of the challenges is to ensure that future graduates come away “digitally conscious”, with the skills to reach audiences through new media. Dallas Opera is active online — the TDO Network has one of the strongest followings among opera companies’ online events platforms — and is keen to build on the reputation it has won for promoting equality.

“We have become the Wikipedia for women conductors,” says Lomeli. “People phone us up and ask ‘Who are your top 10?’”