The world’s best-known conductor, Marin Alsop, revealed that she is “offended” by her best-known fictional counterpart: Lydia Tár.
“So many superficial aspects of Tár seemed to align with my own personal life,” Alsop said in an interview published this week in the UK’s Sunday Times. “But once I saw it I no longer worried, I was offended: they offended me as a woman, they offended me as a director, they offended me as a lesbian.”
The main character in Todd Field’s critically acclaimed film “Tár” and Alsop are barrier-breaking American directors, protégés of legendary director Leonard Bernstein (although Tár’s claim is questionable), professors at top American conservatories, and lesbian mothers married to bandmates. musicians
However, the fictional teacher, played by Oscar winner Cate Blanchett, is also a narcissistic and manipulative abuser who is accused of sexual misconduct by a subordinate.
“Having the opportunity to play a woman in that role and make her an abuser was heartbreaking for me. I think all women and all feminists should be upset about that kind of portrayal because it’s not really about female conductors, is it? This is about women as leaders in our society,” Alsop, principal conductor of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and winner of the MacArthur “genius award”, told the Sunday Times. “There are so many real men, documented men that this movie could have been based on but instead it puts a woman in the role but gives her all the attributes of those men. That feels anti-woman.”
Alsop, who previously served as music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and several other real-life conductors are named by Blanchett’s fictional teacher in the first act of “Tár”. When the title character is interviewed by real-life New York writer Adam Gopnik, who plays himself, she says, “As far as the gender bias thing goes, I have nothing to complain about. Neither, really, Nathalie Stutzmann, Laurence Equilbey, Marin Alsop or JoAnn Falletta. There were so many amazing women who came before us, women who did the real lifting.”
Alsop appears to disagree with her fictional counterpart, telling the Sunday Times that she doesn’t think “there will ever be a time when there are no barriers for women” in the world of conducting.
“I have seen progress and then regression many, many times,” he said. “I’m hopeful that the progress we’ve made now is substantive and quantitative enough that it can’t be reversed, because I think there are those who would like to reverse it.”
After Alsop left her position with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in August 2021 after a 14-year tenure, The New York Times reported that there was no female conductor in any of the 25 largest orchestras in the country. Now, there’s only one: Stutzmann, who took the podium at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in October.
While “Tár” may have struck a chord with Alsop, it seems to have had the opposite effect on film critics. The film and Blanchett have already won several awards, including an AFI Award and a Gotham Award, and is nominated for three awards — best picture, best actress and best screenplay — at Tuesday’s Golden Globes. He is also expected to be a major performer at this year’s Academy Awards ceremony in March.
Focus Features, the US distributor of “Tár”, did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment. (Focus Features and NBC News are owned by Comcast NBCUniversal.)
