ABSTRACT
Nadia Boulanger has often been labelled either the only female conductor active in interwar France, or as a woman on the podium unusual. Alan Kendall, for example, has described conducting as ‘a role which, until her [Nadia Boulanger’s] advent, had been an exclusively male prerogative’;1 whilst Jeanice Brooks has referred to ‘the rare spectacle of a woman on the podium’.2 Discussing the Princesse Edmond de Polignac’s support of Nadia Boulanger’s conducting career, meanwhile, Caroline Potter has asserted that the support of a wealthy patron was ‘no doubt the only way a woman could develop a conducting career in the 1930s’.3 As this chapter argues, however, Nadia Boulanger was neither the only woman conductor working in interwar France nor was attracting the patronage of an influential sponsor, such as the Princesse Edmond de Polignac, the only way that a woman could establish herself on the podium during these years. Through assessing the activities of the Orchestra of the UFPCM (Union des Femmes Professeurs et Compositeurs de Musique) and Jane Evrard and the Orchestre féminin de Paris, it is argued that women conductors and all-woman orchestras were in fact active in France throughout the interwar period. Furthermore, that several international female conductors – such as Gertrud Herliczka,4 Eva Brunelli, and Carmen Studer-Weingartner – were invited to appear as guest conductors with a number of leading French orchestras, including the Orchestre symphonique de Paris and the Orchestre Pasdeloup, during these years actually suggests that interwar Paris was a particularly supportive musical centre for female conductors.
