Saariaho’s ‘L’Amour’ first work by woman at Met since 1903

NEW YORK — When the first notes of Kaija Saariaho’s “L’Amour de Loin (Love From Afar)” are played at the Metropolitan Opera on Thursday night, Dec. 1, it will mark only the second staged work by a female composer in the company’s history — and the first since 1903.

“It is staggering,” said Jennifer Higdon, one of six women to win the Pulitzer Prize for music.

In 1983, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich became the first female composer to win the award.

“I actually had someone say to me at one point that they wanted to do an orchestral piece of mine, but they already had done a woman that year,” Zwilich recalled this week.

Saariaho, a 64-year-old Finn who has long lived in Paris, also wrote “Adriana Mater,” which debuted at the Opera de Paris’ Bastille auditorium in 2005, and “Emilie,” first seen at the Opera de Lyon in 2010.

Ethel M. Smyth’s “Der Wald (The Forest)” was the first opera by a female composer at the Met, receiving just two performances.

Gelb is also planning the company debut of “Akhnaten,” a 1983 opera about the pharaoh by minimalist composer Philip Glass.

Higdon, whose “Cold Mountain” debuted at the 2015 Santa Fe Opera, had a sold-out run of the staging this year at Opera Philadelphia.

[...] in many places, the gender gap in classical composition remains an issue.