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238 FEMALE COMPOSERS
Female conductors In 1911, Smyth wrote “The March of
the Women” as a Suffragette rallying
Only in the 20th century did cry. An active protester, she was
women begin to conduct sentenced to two months in Holloway
orchestras. When the role Prison, in 1912, for smashing a window.
emerged in the 19th century,
it was monopolized by male
composers, with women Many contemporaries were
confined to conducting generous in their praise of The
choirs. In the 1930s, the Wreckers. Writing in 1910 in the
Dutch-American Antonia second edition of The New Grove
Brico conducted the Berlin Dictionary of Music and Musicians,
Philharmonic, and the French the British music critic John Fuller
composer Nadia Boulanger Maitland observed: “It is difficult
became the first woman to point to a work of any nationality
to conduct London’s Royal since Wagner that has a more
Philharmonic. In the 1950s, direct appeal to the emotions, or
Margaret Hollis achieved that is more skilfully planned and
renown as a choral director, carried out.” The novelist Virginia
founding the Chicago Woolf was more ambivalent. In
Symphony Chorus in 1957,
and, in 1976, Sarah Caldwell 1931, she, her husband, Leonard,
was the first female composer had better luck at the and her lover, Vita Sackville-West,
conductor at the Metropolitan next location, Vienna, where accompanied Smyth to see The
Opera, New York. Mahler was director of the opera Wreckers at the Sadler’s Wells
It took another 30 years house. He expressed an interest in Theatre, London. She noted in her
for a woman, Marin Alsop, seeing Smyth, but the person she diary that the opera was “vigorous
to become chief conductor of actually met was his second-in- & even beautiful; & active &
a major American orchestra, command, the conductor Bruno absurd & extreme; & youthful: as if
the Baltimore Symphony Walter. He was impressed but some song in her had tried to issue
Orchestra. In 2013, Alsop could not promise a production. & been choked.” Beecham in his
scored another first for a Back in London, Smyth’s memoirs, published in 1944, was a
woman when she conducted experiences were similarly whole-hearted enthusiast, judging
the Last Night of the Proms checkered. In 1908, a concert The Wreckers “one of the three or
in London’s Albert Hall.
version of the first two acts was four English operas of real musical
well received by many critics but merit and vitality written during
overshadowed by personal sadness. the past forty years.”
Brewster, who was in the final
stages of liver cancer, had traveled Blazing a trail
from Rome for the performance. While Woolf’s judgment is perhaps
He died less than a month later. the one most modern critics would
The next year, The Wreckers— come closest to, Smyth’s role in
now translated by Smyth into opening up a path for later female
English—was successfully staged composers is beyond doubt. In
at His Majesty’s Theatre, London, The Wreckers, she took on one
conducted by the young Thomas of the most ambitious forms of
Beecham. The conductor also composition. Through her talent,
included it in his first season at the perseverance, and sheer drive,
Marin Alsop conducts the Royal Opera House the year after, Smyth established herself as a
Swedish Radio Symphony although it suffered by comparison serious composer. She went on to
Orchestra in 2009. She has led with a new work being performed write three further smaller-scale
orchestras in the UK, Brazil,
and the US. at Covent Garden that season: operas—two one-act comedies
Richard Strauss’s Elektra. and Fête galante (1922), a “dance-
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