NEW YORK — Oksana Lyniv, Speranza Scappucci, Marin Alsop and Xian Zhang filled their lockers in the guest conductors’ dressing room, next to the Metropolitan Opera’s orchestra pit. Only four women led the orchestra from 1883 to 2016, but four took the baton in a landmark week, April 19-26.
“Maybe I say it because they’re probably a little shy to say it,” said Alsop, at 67, the oldest member of the group. “It shouldn’t be unusual for it to be part of the fabric. It takes a long time for society to feel comfortable with different things, and our industry is very conservative.”
Lyniv led Puccini’s “Turandot” on April 19, and Scappucci led Puccini’s “La Rondine” the next day. Alsop was present at the Met premiere of John Adams’ “El Niño” on April 23, and Zhang directed Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” on April 26.
“It’s as if a different regent simultaneously arrived in New York,” Lyniv said. “Now I can say that it is much easier to build a career than it was 20 years ago, 25 years ago, when I was a student and just started.”
Even her family pressured Lyniv to reconsider her career.
“There are no examples of successful conductors,” she remembers hearing. “Maybe you’ll conduct a school orchestra or church choirs at most.”
When Susanna Mälkki made her Met debut in 2016, she became only the fourth female conductor in the company’s 133-year history, after Sarah Caldwell, who debuted in 1976, Simone Young (1996) and Jane Glover (2013). The total rose to 14 women, including Keri-Lynn Wilson, wife of Met general manager Peter Gelb.
“There has been a deliberate effort by big companies to create more opportunities for conductors, and I think it’s long overdue,” Gelb said. “Opera is changing, and it is changing for the better, by embracing a wider range of talent, both on and off stage.”
One specific event opened doors and highlighted the lack of equity in hiring.
“Because of MeToo,” Alsop said of the social movement that began in 2017. “It’s not like everyone suddenly became enlightened. It had to be instigated. It had to catch fire. It’s not good to have one. You have to have an infinity.
Like many musicians of her generation, Alsop was inspired by Leonard Bernstein, the first American to lead a major US symphony.
“I saw Bernstein conduct when I was 9 years old. I was more impressed with him talking to us, the audience, when he turned around. I remember him jumping a lot and I thought that was really cool,” Alsop said. “My dad took me to the show and I said, ‘Oh, Dad, I want to be the conductor.’ He said, ‘Great.’ I never changed my mind.”
Scappucci, 51, was born in Rome and accompanied his older sister to piano lessons on the ground floor of the building with neighbor Maria Borzatti.
“After six months, the teacher called my mother and said, ‘Signora Scappucci, Gioia, she’s going to be great at languages,’ the maestro recalled, ‘but I watched the little one. I think she has a really good ear for music, so I’d like to teach her.’”
Speranza studied piano at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory of Music and Juilliard, where he took singer training classes. Valued for her Italian background, she was hired by North American companies as a coach. She became assistant to Riccardo Muti at the Salzburg Festival, then moved into conducting and from 2017-22 she was music director of the Opéra Royal de Wallonie.
Scappucci became the first Italian woman to conduct at Milan’s Teatro alla Scala in 2022, and in 2025-26 she begins as principal guest conductor at London’s Royal Opera. She is in her third season as co-host of the Italian TV show “La gioia della musica (The Joy of Music)”.
Lyniv, 46, was born in Ukraine into a family of musicians. She studied piano and flute. At 18, she had to conduct the student orchestra as part of her curriculum. A retired teacher approached her.
“He told me: ‘You’re not a Toscanini, but you have a great future,’” she recalled, in a reference to the conducting of the great Arturo Toscanini.
Lyniv finished third in the 2004 Gustav Mahler conducting competition. She attended the Dresden Academy of Music, became an assistant at the Odessa National Theater in Odessa, then at Kirill Petrenko’s Bavarian State Opera. She was employed as principal conductor of the Graz Opera from 2017 to 2020, and in 2021 she became the first woman to conduct at the Bayreuth Wagner Festival in Germany. In 2022, she took over the musical direction of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, being the first woman to direct an Italian opera house.
Born in China, Zhang began playing the piano at age 3, but at 16 she was told by a teacher that her hands were too small. She attended the Beijing Central Conservatory of Music and was invited by a teacher to conduct Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro” at age 19 with the National Opera Orchestra of China. Two of his three conducting teachers at that time were women.
“I was so naive. Since I saw them working so hard, I never thought it was very unusual,” Zhang said. “Much later, I realized that was not the case.”
She attended the University of Cincinnati College – Conservatory of Music, won the Maazel/Vilar International Conductor Competition in 2002, and was hired as assistant conductor and later associate of the New York Philharmonic. Zhang became music director of the Sioux City Symphony Orchestra from 2005 to 2007 and the Orquestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi from 2009 to 2016 and has held the position at the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra since 2016.
Preparing the next generation, Lyniv founded the Ukrainian Youth Symphony Orchestra in 2016. Alsop in 2002 started a conducting scholarship awarding $25,000 and has helped 36 women conductors.
“It’s a good time, but I’m also aware of what’s happening in the world around us and how women’s rights are taken away overnight, and it happens all the time,” Alsop said. “So we have to really stay strong and vigilant for future generations.”
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