On October 13, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra announced the appointment of Nathalie Stutzmann as Music Director. Two days earlier, the Teatro communale in Bologna made the Ukrainian Oksana Lyniv the first musical director of a large opera house. Glass ceilings shatter for female bosses. State of play, next steps and future stars.
What revenge! Nathalie Stutzmann, 56, is one of those musicians who have been discouraged from studying conducting because of their gender. Having become in 1985 one of the greatest contraltos on the planet, it also connects us to a time when women had to form an orchestra (Orfeo 55, in 2009) to start conducting.
For five or six years, when Nathalie Stutzmann was hired by a large orchestra, she managed to convince. Yannick Nézet-Séguin had made her in December 2020 the principal guest conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra. His nomination in Atlanta followed by two months a second test concert with the Minnesota Orchestra. Can we imagine that two great American orchestras were competing for it?
From taboo to wave
When The duty looked for the first time on the phenomenon of the arrival of women on the catwalks, it was, in a rather pioneering way in the international press, in February 2016, a few weeks after the appointment of Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla in Birmingham .
As the title expressed, it was the time of “the end of a taboo” and we recalled the stages of the difficult access to the podium for women leaders. The recent movie The conductor, who paints the portrait of Antonia Brico (1902-1989), also gives a good overview of the stubborn prejudices against women in this profession. Between 2016 and 2019, we went from the taboo to the wave, the vogue. Fashion ? Not sure at all.
These phenomena are easily perceived upstream when agencies sign with artists. We have seen the agencies on the lookout for the smallest young boss, skimming the management competitions, almost going into the classrooms (we exaggerate, but hardly). As if to promote the process, some (the Philharmonie de Paris) had the idea of creating a management competition reserved for women. What would not have been said if it had been the other way around.
Because any current generates its excesses. No need to look very far, by the way. Yannick Nézet-Séguin, in 2019, eradicated the male sex among the conductors invited to lead the Orchester Métropolitain. The advantage for Montreal music lovers will be to be able to get an idea in a minimum of time of the talents present. OM will notably welcome Speranza Scappucci in April 2022 and Nathalie Stutzmann in June.
If, unlike Atlanta, the OSM did not choose a woman to succeed Kent Nagano, it is not because the hypothesis was rejected. Several were considered for a test concert. Some have obtained it. Others, and in particular Susanna Mälkki, really believed in it.
Image and realities
The surprise is to have seen the ceilings broken by Nathalie Stutzmann and Oksana Lyniv. We expected more Karina Canellakis, in the symphonic, and Speranza Scappucci, for the lyric. 48-year-old Speranza Scappucci is on everyone’s lips from Milan to New York. She has always been immersed in the opera world as a rehearsal pianist and made the leap to conducting in 2012. In 2021, she is expected at La Scala, Covent Garden and the Met.
So who is Oksana Lyniv? The rise of this 43-year-old Ukrainian is dazzling. After having studied in Odessa, she was Kirill Petrenko’s assistant in Munich between 2013 and 2017. Petrenko let her direct performances that attracted attention. One of her first guest conductor contracts took her to Graz, Austria, for Traviata in 2016. Less than six months later, the Graz Opera House appointed her musical director. Oksana Lyniv, who created a National Youth Orchestra in Ukraine, is the first woman to conduct in Bayreuth (The ghost ship, This year). One of his watchwords: ” Do not hesitate ; to do. “
Things are going in a less overwhelming way for the New Yorker Karina Canellakis, 40, tested, without success for the moment, by all the symphony orchestras in search of a new conductor, Montreal included. She directs the Dutch Radio Orchestra which has just renewed her post until 2028, a good sign.
By winning Atlanta, Nathalie Stutzmann is not the first female conductor of an orchestra in the United States. There’s JoAnn Falletta, who does a great job in Buffalo, Marin Alsop in Baltimore, and there’s Xian Zhang in New Jersey. But the rank of the Atlanta Orchestra is much higher.
The past five years have taught us that the ones we talk about are not necessarily the ones that win and last. In an expanding market, there is a great initial advantage in being excessively lathered, a phenomenon facilitated in this world of the Internet where the lines between public relations, blogs and true-false journalism are sometimes subtly blurred. But artificial foam is fleeting: in music, it is the re-invitations and renewals of contracts, plus the critical reviews of concerts and the opinions of musicians, that count in the end.
What will multiply from now on is in particular the appearance of women at the head of American orchestras. It fits naturally into the need for an image of equity and diversity that institutions want to project at all costs. Things will therefore change at least as much in the next five years. It remains to be seen whether the next step will be taken: will the direction of the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony or the Amsterdam Concertgebouw fall to a woman?
The stars of tomorrow
Among the values in sharp decline, there is Alondra de la Parra, icon of the first wave. In the outstanding personalities, Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla, who is looking for an orchestra. We know him have restless thurifers, but are there really a lot of fans? Another ubiquitous media artist, the German Joanna Mallwitz, stationed at the Konzerthaus in Berlin. Very curious, there too, to see the evolution in the five years to come.
In addition to Nathalie Stutzmann, Oksana Lyniv, Speranza Scappucci, it will be necessary, among other things, to closely monitor the courses of Elim Chan, Han-na Chang, Kristiina Poska, Dalia Stasevska and Gemma New.
Chan, 34, from Hong Kong, has an innate talent. We have it view to open the 2019-2020 season from Amsterdam Concertgebouw with impressive aplomb.
One wonders why Han-na Chang has no other post besides the one she occupies in Trondheim, Norway. Her 10e Symphony by Shostakovich with the Metropolitan Orchestra was dazzling. She will soon be directing in Philadelphia …
Kristiina Poska is currently recording in Belgium for Fuga Libera, which should become the first complete discographic of Beethoven’s symphonies by a woman. The 43-year-old Estonian has an incisive profile close to that of Lyniv.
Dalia Stasevska, a 37-year-old Ukrainian, was invited by the OSM to lead the 3e Symphony by Sibelius. She is stationed in Lahti, Finland, and married the great-grandson of Sibelius.
Gemma New will be coming to direct the OSM this season. The 34-year-old New Zealander, assistant for four years at the Orchester de Saint-Louis, was first spotted by I Musici, who had brought her to Montreal in February 2020.
Obviously, Simone Young, Susanna Mälkki, Marin Alsop, JoAnn Falletta, Xian Zhang, Laurence Equilbey continue their careers. In Quebec, we have in particular Dina Gilbert and Mélanie Leonard. In Canada, Keri-Lynn Wilson and Tania Miller, as well as singer Barbara Hannigan, who, unlike Nathalie Stutzmann, has not taken off outside a certain niche.
While the evolutions of Anu Tali and Marzena Diakun (mentioned in 2016) remain to be observed, like a good dozen others, it is, like Lyniv and New, the breeding ground for better assistants than the true values of tomorrow will probably emerge, those which have built up a background that will change the situation when the time is right.
As such, the German Erina Yashima, who will lead OM on November 30, for the time being off almost all radars, has been an assistant in Philadelphia for two years, after having worked for three years with Riccardo Muti in Chicago, and signed in June with the same agency as Yannick Nézet-Séguin. To imagine that we will not hear from her is already a utopia.