Antonia Brico, 87; Pushed From Podium by Sexism

Antonia Brico, the formidable maestra who invaded the male-dominated world of symphonic conducting nearly 60 years ago but then was forced to leave it because of the rampant sexism of that day, has died in a Denver nursing home.

The Associated Press reported Friday that the first woman to conduct the Los Angeles Philharmonic (Aug. 1, 1930) and several other major symphony orchestras died Thursday.

She was 87 and had lived in relative obscurity in Colorado since being forced to abandon a sporadic career that had lasted until the early 1940s.

Ignored by the serious musicologists of her day, she also was treated as a freak by critics. When she first led the New York Philharmonic in 1930, the New York Times reported that “the last musical barrier has fallen before the Amazons.”

She founded an all-women’s orchestra, but it too was not taken seriously. “These concerts,” reported Baker’s Biographical Dictionary, which devoted but a single paragraph to her career, “aroused a certain curiousity.”

Then when she tried to integrate men into her women’s orchestra (saying “I want people to mix in symphonies as they do in life”), her Board of Directors lost interest.

She had also conducted twice at the Metropolitan Opera but was refused a third concert because baritone John Charles Thomas refused to have a woman at the podium.

She persevered, however, and continued to conduct in some European and American cities, even returning to Los Angeles in 1941. But this time she was leading the Depression-inspired WPA Orchestra, not the Philharmonic.

Finally, in 1945, she moved to Denver, where she became conductor of the Denver Businessmen’s Orchestra.

Her story might have ended there except for the memories of one of her former music students, the popular singer and composer Judy Collins. In 1974, Collins co-produced a poignant film documentary, “Antonia: A Portrait of a Woman.”

It premiered in an era of emerging feminism, and although it had limited showings at museums and small theaters throughout the country, it awoke interest in the Netherlands native.

(Collins said the inspiration for the picture came from her own career, which she had temporarily abandoned in 1972 because of her disappointment in the music of that day. “Antonia,” she said, was made as a portrait of a woman whose personal disappointments never deterred her from passing on knowledge and hope to younger people.)

As an result of the film, Miss Brico became a sociological symbol, which resulted in, among other things, a belated homecoming at the Hollywood Bowl.

More than 11,000 turned out on July 12, 1975, to see her once again conduct the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a program of Mozart, Richard Strauss and Wagner.

But that appears to have been her last major public performance, and she returned to Denver where the Businessmen’s Orchestra eventually became the Brico Symphony.