The Vienna Opera Finally Enters the 21st Century

Sometimes it seems like it was only yesterday that I was in Vienna, engaged in a long conversation with a violinist from the Vienna Opera Orchestra who told me that music was no profession for a woman. Indeed, in the Vienna of the early 1980s, there were only a few performing organizations in Vienna that even considered hiring women. Now the Vienna Opera has appointed Albena Danailova as its concertmaster, which means a great deal to those who have endured the backward-looking attitudes towards women in the European orchestras.