What We Learned

Women take many different routes into and through the profession. Many are ‘late starters’, often due to lack of encouragement earlier in life. Some will come to conducting after working successfully and extensively as coaches and repetiteurs, while others will build a career gradually over many years, taking career breaks and in some cases actively avoiding high risk opportunities for rapid ascension to elite circles.

Lack of visibility can impact on aspiration and ambition in girls and young women and on the experience of women operating in the profession. Seeing someone of the same gender ahead of you helps seed the idea that the profession is for you, while being aware of others alongside you is empowering and prevents energy going on management of the ‘curiosity factor’ of being a woman.

Conductors work in a highly competitive environment, where the pressure of audition and having just one chance in front of an orchestra can weigh heavily. Confidence levels, coupled with cognisance of bringing something different to a profession traditionally occupied by men, can affect performance. Equally, unconscious bias in the face of difference can play a part in how performance is assessed.

Managing a freelance career alongside pressures of, for example, finance (especially in London) and family commitments (international engagements can be particularly difficult to manage while raising a family) can be extremely challenging. One-off opportunities and the reliance on freelancers to take continuous initiative doesn’t ease the situation. If a freelancer isn’t able to see a clear pathway ahead she, or he, might decide the profession is too difficult to navigate and find an alternative occupation.

A growing number of women are coming into conducting and increasingly organisations are paying attention to supporting their development, for example the Dallas Opera through its Institute for Women Conductors, signalling an exciting shift in the industry.

What We’re Doing in Response to What We Learned

The Royal Opera House is planning to:

• Create clearer pathways to and through the conducting profession by partnering with schools, conservatoires and peer companies to strengthen and join up talent development pipelines.
• Strengthen its scouting processes to identify female talent at every level, nationally and internationally, increasing the number of women conductors whose work is being assessed and monitored.
• Develop the best possible environment for women conductors to thrive in, paying particular attention to their development needs.
• Increase the visibility of the female conductors who are working with the company.

Is This Work a Step Towards a Bigger Goal?

This is a first step towards the development of a talent pool which has as many experienced and established female conductors as male conductors and in which both are equally represented on our podiums.

The project has also contributed to the way we think about increasing the diversity of our work across the board; for example it has sparked a conversation about how we can better foster creative environments across artistic disciplines in which leading women can thrive.

“Opera needs to pull on the widest possible pool of artists if it is to find the very best future talent. I’d very much like to see more women conductors working at the Royal Opera House at all levels – not only coming up through our young artist programmes but also appearing regularly on all our podiums.”
Sir. Antonio Pappano, Music Director, The Royal Opera