All the women who ever conducted at the Salzburg Festival
mainOur allies on the high redoubt have been scouring the dungeons for traces of gender diversity. Here’s the ultimate list:
OPERA
Anne Manson, Abbado’s assistant, replaced him on August 25, 1994 in one performance of Boris Godunov.
Julia Jones jumped in five times in Die Entführung aus dem Serail in 2004, replacing Marcello Viotti. She also led a Mozart Matinee.
CONCERTS
Dominique My conducted a Nono-to-Neuwirth programee on August 8, 1998.
Laurence Equilbey had several concerts in 2012.
Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla performed her Young Conductors Award concert on August 12, 2012.
Erina Yashima led the children’s opera Der Schauspieldirektor on August 5, 2018.
Giedrė Šlekytė had her award concert on August 8, 2015
Sian Edwards conducted Scelsi on August 7, 2007
Anu Tali had a Mozart matinee on August 19, 2006
Elisabeth Fuchs led a youth orchestra on July 28, 2006.
That’s all, folks.
UPDATE: We are reminded that Simone Young cnducted a Sciarrino concert at Klangforum in 2008. I may even have been there.
Great. Please, now the list of all performances by black and asian conductors….
Gays? Trans?
Disabled?
Many disabled have conducted at Salzburg.
Levine, Gatti…
And all those who have conducted at Salzburg and were generally accepted objectively by their peers, critics and attendees not to be good enough.
The list is not ultimate: f.e. in 2008 Simone Young conducted Sciarrino with the Klangforum Wien
“Our allies on the high redoubt…” – what on earth does that mean? Now NL cannot even string a decent English sentence together. This blog is cementing its reputation as a slap-dash joke in the cultural sphere.
I would also fancy a list of compositions by female composers performed at Salzburg…
The Festspiele in catholic Salzburg are conservative by definition and are dominated by traditional etiquette rules.
Change of such well established systems don’t happen over night.
The ultra-conservative attitude in Salzburg is currently giving us a Corona-resistant edition of the Summer Festival, which is better than nothing or cyber-stream alternatives from Bayreuth and Glyndebourne.
But the awareness of the Salzburg gender issue seems to be out there in the local media – so there is still hope!
https://www.sn.at/salzburger-festspiele/salzburger-festspiele-nur-eine-frau-als-dirigentin-73851331
While Lucerne overdid it with a trendy festival of female talent (probably too much at a time), Salzburg seems to prefer to wait until the natural selection process has determined a female icon through invitations to the Vienna Philharmonic.
We’ll see in 2120 where we are.
Yup, Anne Manson leading the way years before women conductors became fashionable. Let’s hear more about her and less about the recent bandwaggoners.
Let Marilyn Manson produce an opera for Salzburg!
If Marilyn Manson were to produce an opera there, I would sell my (non-existent) riches to get there to experience it…and I’d probably be forced to fight my way in through the crowd of billions of others who were fans or just curious about the event.
Hear, hear! Anne Manson was, and IS, the Real Deal.
In other words, women were only brought in
1) to replace a man
2) conduct children’s concerts
3) conduct youth orchestras
4) take part in their own “award programs”
4) conduct odd little programs
5) conduct matinees
Got it.
That’s Salzburg.
Karajan, Jedermann, and sucking Mozart balls.
Laurence Equilbey wasn’t actually anybody’s replacement. She conducted a new work during the festival opening ceremony in the Felsenreitschule, a Bach programme in the concert hall of the Mozarteum which was broadcast and a Mozart mass in the St Peter’s Church among others – all with fully professional, adult artists. I believe she has returned to conduct other works in Salzburg since. I don’t know about the participation of the other ladies cited here.
Sometimes I wonder what Europe would still be like without America.
Droit de seigneur?
Gotta blame all those fighter pilots who died over the UK and Europe, enjoying all that white privilege as they crashed and burned. Americans mostly not involved in that and it must be ironically comforting right now when the white privilege accusation is being flung indiscriminately, far and wide.
Sometimes I wonder what America would be like without Europe.
Roaming bison and slavery instead of woke colleges?
Incidentally, it’s ‘du seigneur’, not ‘de’.
And more properly addressed as ‘droit de cuissage’.
Which in itself appears to be largely a myth; the first documented usage of the term is, as far as available documents permit to circumscribe it, the early 1760s. The main force behind the worthy but vain struggle against what seems to have been the ghost of a windmill was Voltaire; he deftly used this canard to castigate, by proxy, the privileges and abuses of the French class system. As we know all too well from Beaumarchais, the meme caught on.
Historians of mentalities have long been interested in the question why this myth was believed, why it gained credibility and was credited with plausibility.
The literature on the subject is vast. A succinct stepping stone:
http://www.zetetique.ldh.org/cuissage.html
On “droit de seigneur” vs “droit du seigneur”:
You’re being pedantic for all the wrong reasons. If no such right existed, that it was a myth, then there was no official term, so usage, as it evolved over time and geography, is what matters, and both terms existed and evolved in Italy, France, Germany, England.
And whether you use the preposition “de” or the partitive article “du” depends on the grammatical use you want to make of “droit” and/or of “seigneur”.
QED.
Simone Young. Absolute champion.
Giedre also conducted the children’s opera a couple of years back.
Would love to see the percentage of professional conductors, by gender, who have conducted at the Salzburg Festival.
i cannot no longer accept any male or female conductors. nor can i accept any trans, as that is too commonplace. only those who do not identify as anything, whether gender or sexuality or musical preference! That is the future!