[From The Advertiser / Australia]

   Australian is first woman to head Vienna orchestra

   10nov05
   An Australian woman has broken one of the world's last bastions
   of male dominance by being named to conduct the prestigious
   Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.

   Sydney-born Simone Young will take the baton on Sunday, becoming
   the first female to conduct the 156-year-old orchestra.

   The Vienna Philharmonic was ordered to accept women in 1997 if
   it wanted to continue receiving state subsidies, but continued
   to exclude females by claiming aspiring musicians were not up
   to standard.

   In two concerts scheduled this weekend in the Wiener Musikverein,
   the site of the famous New Year's concert, Ms Young will conduct
   Leonard Bernstein's Overture to Candide, Aaron Copland's Concerto
   for Clarinet and Orchestra and excerpts from Mahler's Des Knaben
   Wunderhorn and Schumann's Symphony No 4.
   
   Ms Young has been chief conductor at the Australian Opera in
   Sydney and Melbourne.
   
   Considered one of the leading conductors of her generation, she
   has conducted a broad range of operas and concerts for major
   opera companies and orchestras, including the Royal Opera House,
   Covent Garden, the Vienna State Opera, the Opera Bastille in
   Paris and the Metropolitan Opera in New York.  She is currently
   head of the Hamburg State Opera and general musical director of
   the Hamburg State Philharmonic.
   
   The Vienna Philharmonic was forced to break with its male-only
   tradition under pressure from feminists in America who threatened
   to disrupt its U.S. tours in the late 1990s.

Janos Gereben
www.sfcv.org
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