Marin Alsop, the world’s foremost woman conductor, is no fan of “TÁR,” the acclaimed film about an unscrupulous woman conductor.
“I was offended as a woman, I was offended as a conductor, I was offended as a lesbian,” Alsop said of the movie, which stars Cate Blanchett as Berlin Philharmonic leader Lydia Tár.
Alsop, chief conductor at the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra over the weekend in two performances of works by 21st-century women composers.
Like Alsop, Blanchett’s character is gay, married to a musician and a protege of Leonard Bernstein. The character actually mentions Alsop as she makes a case that there is no gender bias in classical music.
But the main trait of Lydia Tár is that she’s a monster, cruel to subordinates and accused of predatory behavior toward young women.
“To have an opportunity to portray a woman in that role and to make her an abuser — for me that was heartbreaking,” Alsop told The Sunday Times. “I think all women and all feminists should be bothered by that kind of depiction because it’s not really about women conductors, is it? It’s about women as leaders in our society. People ask, ‘Can we trust them? Can they function in that role?’ It’s the same questions whether it’s about a CEO or an NBA coach or the head of a police department.”
She alluded to sexual misconduct claims against some of classical music’s most prominent male conductors, including James Levine and Charles Dutoit.
“There are so many men — actual, documented men — this film 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. To assume that women will either behave identically to men or become hysterical, crazy, insane is to perpetuate something we’ve already seen on film so many times before.”
The role of Lydia Tár has been one of the most lauded of Blanchett’s illustrious career, and earned her best actress awards from the Venice Film Festival and critics’ groups in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. She is a nominee at Tuesday’s Golden Globe Awards.
