Women Composers Still Waiting in the Wings
The opera world is still dominated by male composers. That is starting to change.
“The Metropolitan Opera: timeless and right on time.”
The world-famous New York City opera company started broadcasting this slogan across media platforms days before announcing their 2023–2024 season. The first half of the slogan holds up: The Met, as it is more commonly referred as, has housed some of the most renowned artists to perform in the most famous productions in opera history. The company’s timelessness has captivated the hearts and ears of approximately 800,000 opera attendees every season throughout its 140-year existence, not including its audience abroad — from 73 countries across six continents — who listen to the Met radio station and attend their local cinema to see streamed performances of The Met: Live in HD.
The Met has capitalized off of timelessness, grandfathered into the dream pursuits of opera industry hopefuls and the consciousness of loyal patrons for generations. But even time can catch up with timelessness — especially when keeping “timelessness” alive relies on the financial support of an increasingly aging audience.
Critics say opera is a dying art form, no matter how powerful the opera house. The Met has struggled to carry opera into the 21st century due to dwindling interest over the last decade, resulting in declining box-office sales. The COVID-19 pandemic dug The Met’s grave even deeper, causing the company a $150 million loss in total revenue. Thus, the company was forced to accept that solely producing timeless works was not enough.
The Met’s upcoming season will “feature more new and accessible works that have proven to attract a broader, younger and more diverse audience,” Met general manager Peter Gelb said in a statement after the new season was announced. “Without reinvention, without expanding the repertoire, opera cannot succeed in the long term.”
At this point, it would kill The Met — which has withdrawn $23 million from its endowment and cut performances next season by 10 percent — to not try something new. New works from past seasons like Kevin Puts’ The Hours and Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones — which will both be revived next season — came “right on time” for the struggling company, putting more bodies in seats than the opera house had seen in years. New works are outselling the classics, drawing in a broader, younger, and more diverse audience — yet they will only make up about a third of The Met’s next season.
It appears hard to break away from the past. Since the beginning of opera, works composed by dead white men have dominated the scene and claimed their territory in big opera houses like The Met. Even though it is the living composers who are creating operatic works keeping the art form alive, the deceased male greats of composition’s past remain the most produced and highly-celebrated by the opera industry — an industry that, despite its changes, still proves to be behind the times rather than “right on time.”
In their 2023–2024 season, The Met will still mostly feature works by dead white men, a few new works by living white men, and a small sprinkle of works by men of color. But there is not a single woman composer in the lineup.
The exclusion of women composers from the opera industry is no new phenomenon. For centuries — according to Sounds and Sweet Airs: The Forgotten Women of Classical Music by cultural historian Anna Beer — they “created their music in societies that made certain places off-limits for a woman, from the opera house to the university, from the conductor’s podium to the music publisher — societies where certain jobs, whether in cathedral, court or conservatoire, were ones for which they could not even apply.”
Gendered stigma has had a generational impact on the current opera industry in the U.S., where only 13.2 percent of composers are women — and only a fortunate few compose the five percent of work which the classical music industry ever produces. The works of women have been and are still underproduced, overlooked, or even forgotten. Still, there are women in this industry who have persisted despite its male-dominated musical culture, working to create a more inclusive and equitable future for marginalized voices in opera. Today, they feel that it is time for opera to catch up.
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In 2018, classical composer Missy Mazzoli broke the ‘glass ceiling,’ becoming one of the first two women in history to be commissioned by The Met. Now acknowledged in the industry for her contemporary orchestral, chamber, and operatic works — including her opera Proving Up, inspired by Karen Russell’s short story about the dark side of the American dream. Mazzoli’s success as a woman in the opera industry required tenacity from the very beginning, she explained. “I started writing music when I was 10 and I was persistent,” she said. “I just knew that this is what I was going to do.”
From her early days as a musician growing up in Pennsylvania to earning her master’s degree in composition from the Yale School of Music in 2006, Mazzoli faced challenges in pursuing music. She explained that, although she did not experience outright discrimination during her studies, it was harder for her to make connections as a woman.
“There were no mentors for us; no female professors in my high school, undergrad or graduate school… It was all men,” said Mazzoli. “It’s mostly the men celebrating other men in the orchestras and opera companies… and that’s what makes women feel like there’s not a place for them in the field.”
Mazzoli was the only woman in her undergraduate music composition program, and one of a stark few in her graduate class. “When you’re the only one of anything in a group that’s a precarious and lonely position to be in, and that was my experience all the time,” she said. “And I still feel that way.”
In 2016, Mazzoli co-founded Luna Composition Lab — an outreach organization for female-identifying, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming composers ages 13–18. She said she wanted to create a space where young artists typically overlooked by the industry could be mentored and feel supported in a way that she did not. Luna Composition Lab’s mentors — many of whom are award-winning artists or composition professors at prestigious institutions — encourage creative exploration and coach fellows toward the best possible version of their works.
“I think young men are given opportunities based on potential, but women are only given opportunities based on proof — and it’s hard to prove yourself unless someone is willing to listen,” said Mazzoli. “Young men who choose to pursue music in this industry are celebrated, but that kind of language isn’t used for young women.”
Mazzoli’s organization aims to bridge the gap, recruiting colleagues who were also underrepresented in the industry to offer their expertise and experience to the next generation of composers. “I’m really committed in my life and work to making sure that the exposure of women’s work is not a fad by creating a critical mass of supported young female artists,” she said.
“Programs like the one Missy is running are really important,” singer-composer and composition professor Kamala Sankaram commented. “They help you to start building that network of people earlier, and then you have the support you need as you’re going through the early stages of your career.”
Like Mazzoli, Sankaram — who teaches at Mannes School of Music and SUNY — wants to be the mentor she never had for her college students. “The pipeline has been so overwhelmingly male, and not having that mentorship model as a female artist just made things more difficult than they needed to be,” she said. “I hope that being a female composer and teacher will make it easier for them — for all of my students — but especially for my female-identifying students who are entering the industry.”
New York Women Composers supports the creation, promotion and performance of music written by career-age women. The organization’s president Marilyn Bliss, a composer who has been volunteering with NYWC since it was founded in 1984, is proud of how much the non-profit has helped to increase the exposure of women composers’ work, not only in the city, but on a global level. “That’s one of the exciting things about our work at this organization — the dissemination of women’s music, and helping them become known,” she said.
On a larger scale, NYWC has been able to offer seed funding grants to a number of their members so their works can be performed in concerts or on recordings. But Bliss has tried to help guide the careers of certain members on an individual level as well. “In my role, I have written a couple of letters of recommendation for some talented musicians who have gotten their green cards,” she said. “That may seem small, but it’s changed the lives of these women who are now working and making an artistic contribution to this country, and that feels rewarding to me.”
Going forward, Bliss hopes to see more growth, both in the organization’s membership and its impact. Inclusivity for women in the classical music industry has increased since the organization’s founding almost 40 years ago, but Bliss acknowledges that there is still a long way to go. The small but mighty NYWC will continue to advocate for its members’ billable rate and visibility. “We can’t always shoot for the stars as a small organization, but we’ll do whatever we can to build our own constellation,” said Bliss.
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Laura Kaminsky has been working as a composer in the classical music industry for over 35 years. Similarly to Mazzoli, Kaminsky found mentorship hard to come by as a woman during and after college. Instead, the New Yorker carved her own way into the industry. “I just started creating my own performance opportunities and created a composer-performer collective,” said Kaminsky. “Whether it was through a bake sale or applying for a grant, we [the composers] would find a way to pay players who believed in us — young artists in New York, struggling to play concerts and make a living.”
For years, Kaminsky worked in various cultural institutions and taught music classes across the country and overseas to make a living while trying to get her own music off the ground. She persisted in her composition endeavors because for her, writing music was not a choice. “I needed to write music like I needed to eat,” said Kaminsky. “It’s just who I am.”
It was not until Kaminsky’s first opera As One — which tells the story of a transgender woman on her journey through transition — premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2014 that she was able to start working as a full-time composer. The opera was revolutionary for both the opera world — which had never seen a story like this — and Kaminsky’s career. Now writing her seventh opera, As One has had a lasting impact on the composer and the opera community at large.
“Most contemporary operas get a premiere and maybe a second or third production, but As One is about to have its 58th production in less than 10 years — which is an anomaly, especially because the subject matter is not what one would think would be easily embraced by opera audiences,” said Kaminsky. “It’s specifically a story about a transgender person and finding their truth, but it’s really an existential metaphor for anybody… and that’s why people relate to it.”
Artists like Kaminsky and Mazzoli are considered trailblazers in their field, contributing operas that critics call poignant and raw, and completely unique for the traditional industry. Yet, they said the work of female composers is still underrepresented and undervalued.
“Generally, women composers are earning about a third less than their male counterparts, and we still don’t see equal representation of women getting the big productions, symphonies, [and] the important chamber music series’,” said Kaminsky. “There are more concerts for Women’s Month in March just like there are more concerts for Black composers in February — but that tells me there’s still a long way to go.”
Cheryl Hickman created her own opera company so she could write her own rules as a woman and possess the power to put the spotlight on marginalized voices. After studying opera at The Juilliard School in New York and touring around the globe as a singer for a number of years, Hickman returned to her East Coast Canadian roots and founded Opera on the Avalon, or OOTA, in St. John’s, Newfoundland.
OOTA is run mainly by women and members of the LGBTQ+ community, and employs Canada’s only woman conductor of color, straying away from the typical patriarchal hierarchy of opera companies. “We really try to be inclusive,” said Hickman. “I believe the more viewpoints we can have, the better work we make.”
Hickman — who commissioned a new work by Kaminsky to premier in OOTA’s next season — wants to produce work written by women, believing they can see beyond the male lens. “Growing up as a girl, you don’t realize that all your viewpoints are male viewpoints — everything is through the male gaze; what men find attractive, what they like — women understand the man’s world because we exist within it, but I don’t necessarily think men can understand the other side of the coin,” she said. “If I go see a movie and it’s directed by a woman, I can usually tell the difference — and opera is the same.”
Still, in the effort to make sure the work of women is heard, her own voice has been challenged. “As a woman running an opera company, being in a position of authority, I sometimes get massive pushback from both women and men who are unused to having a woman in that position,” said Hickman. “There’s still a lot of toxicity in this art form… but the more we can see representation of women in these roles, the better we’ll all be.”
Throughout her career, OOTA’s house conductor Judith Yan has frequently not only been the sole woman in the room, but also the lone woman of color. “At the beginning of my career I didn’t even think about it — I was always just thinking how lucky I was to be in my position as a young woman,” she said. “But I think if I had slowed down and actually thought about it — about how few of us are actually working in this industry — I might have quit.”
Having worked consistently as a lead conductor at a number of big opera houses and ballet companies across North America, Yan has had a phenomenal career in the classical music industry. But she said she has only made it this far by putting her blinders on and giving full attention to her work — because, as a woman in this industry, she cannot afford to make mistakes.
“It’s hard to make it in this industry as a woman, but it’s equally as hard to stay in this industry as a woman,” said Yan. “This industry is harder on women because men get more chances to prove themselves based on the potential to be great — but if a great woman makes a mistake, she doesn’t get another chance.”
“There’s a lot of inequality and bias in the opera industry… and as much as times are changing, women are still not on the agenda,” said opera director and Juilliard professor Mary Birnbaum. “At the end of the day, it just falls on us to not shut up about it ever because the only way it will go away is if we start to make it conscious.”
This past February, Juilliard produced Missy Mazzoli’s Proving Up. It took 10 years of Birnbaum’s persistence, pushing and advocating as a faculty member for the school to produce an opera composed by a woman. “In the seven years of vocal arts training at Juilliard, of the five operas that we produce every year, we had never produced a piece by a female composer ever, living or dead,” she said.
Considering this was Juilliard’s first opera, not only composed by a woman, but also directed by a woman in its 118-year existence, it was seen as a momentous milestone. “But should it have come 40 years, 50 years, 70 years earlier?,” said Birnbaum. She paused, carefully considering her words. “We’re so steeped in tradition,” she said, finally. “To a fault.”
For Juilliard opera student Julia Stuart, performing a leading role in Mazzoli’s opera under a woman-led artistic team was an incredible experience. “Missy was so hands on and eager to come to rehearsals and work with us, even in the super beginning stages,” she said. “She was so grateful just to be a part of it; to be in the room, to see us make mistakes and experiment, and she was so open to what Mary had to say — not all composers are like that.”
Stuart believes composers like Mazzoli are helping to keep opera alive. “It’s these new works with new storylines — like Proving Up’s raw reality of the inability to achieve the American dream — these stories are tapping on real emotions,” she said. “Women like Missy are making opera more accessible to people.”
Mazzoli was thrilled to see her opera performed at Juilliard. But a piece of her still aches. “It’s bittersweet because mine was the first opera by a woman they had ever performed in their entire history — and that’s my story over and over again,” she said.
As the first woman commissioned by The Met, and the first woman performed at L.A. Opera, Cincinnati Opera, and multiple opera houses in Europe, Mazzoli says she is proud of what she has achieved. But, in many ways, she still feels alone. “On the one hand it’s so exciting,” she added. “But on the other hand, it really shows just how little the work of women is celebrated by these big institutions and opera houses compared to the work of men.”
“There’s a connection that you make with fellow women in this industry that you really can’t make with men, I think because we all have to navigate this industry in a way that men have never had to,” said Stuart. “Men can just be men, but as women in this industry, we have to think like men to level up.”
What Hickman said may be true: women have a unique perspective they can offer to the opera world if given the opportunity. But to have been given the opportunity in this male-dominated industry, women — especially those who make up the minority as composers — have had to act like men to an extent in order to be heard and respected.
“Of course things have gotten better… but that’s not the goal,” said Mazzoli. “The goal is equality. When women, nonbinary people, and people of color — all these people who have been excluded from this field for so long — are celebrated in a way where they’re not just represented in one season, but where there’s true, regular representation of these voices that are present in our culture.”
The Met is slated to produce Mazzoli’s commissioned opera — an adaptation of George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo — in 2025. Not “right on time,” but better late than never. Mazzoli may be the first to have broken The Met’s opulent glass ceiling, but she wants it to stay shattered.
“My hope is that as many young women as possible choose to be uncompromising and unapologetic for wanting to create big, loud, expensive work,” said Mazzoli. “We shouldn’t have to play to the tune of men — we are worthy of making our own music.”
