The women missing from music

Manoush Zomorodi (0:00)

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From TED and NPR, I'm Manoush Zomorodi. Today on the show, the women missing from music.

This is Gabriella Di Lacio. She is a classical singer here performing an opera by Vivaldi.

Gabriella Di Laccio (1:00)

I always sang since I was a kid, very young. I'm Brazilian, so I grew up in the south of Brazil and singing. It's a big part of the culture, at school, church, at home.

But it was not until I was, I guess, 11 or 12 that I started to listen to opera on TV, and classical music, and I loved it so much. What that music did to me, and singing in harmony, so I started to imitate them in my living room. And that's how I started to fall in love with classical music.

Manoush Zomorodi (1:42)

Capriela has found that classical music is a language that anyone can understand.

Gabriella Di Laccio (1:48)

It can touch so many people.

And I think that was why I wanted this to be my career, because to be able to see what, just by singing, I could move people and touch people in a way that I never imagined. It's really priceless.

Manoush Zomorodi (2:07)

When you were younger, who were your favorites? Who were the composers that you thought were just the best?

Gabriella Di Laccio (2:15)

Mozart was the composer who I was completely obsessed with, because I watched the movie Amadeus, I guess, as well. But Beethoven as well.

I grew up in a small town. I didn't have access to going to concerts all the time, but eventually, when I was a teenager, I started to go and watch the symphony orchestra every week. And I started to make the music I knew much broader. But of course, they were all men.

Manoush Zomorodi (2:55)

Did that even occur to you that they were men, or were you just kind of like...

Gabriella Di Laccio (2:59)

No. I simply accepted women didn't write music. But I wasn't thinking about it. It was... I didn't question. Let's put it this way. I didn't question.

It was much later that I even thought about it.

Manoush Zomorodi (3:14)

As an adult, Gabriela left Brazil to continue her education. She moved to London, where she studied Baroque music and opera at the Royal College of Music. And she started performing professionally, in operas and as a soloist, singing major works by the classical greats like Bach, Puccini, and Mozart.

But her career changed forever one day in 2016, when she was browsing in a second-hand book market in London.

Gabriella Di Laccio (3:43)

In South Bank, on the weekends under the bridge, they have these sort of outside market with lots of things, second-hand books or art. And I was walking there, and I'm very curious. I love books, and I found this encyclopedia. It looked like two big blue books, art cover. And it said, the International Encyclopedia of Women Composers, publication done in the 80s. And I was like, what?

And then I opened the book, and it said this man had listed 6,000 women composers in the history of music from medieval, pre-medieval times to until 1984 Anyway, I bought the book, took it home, and really shocked, felt, okay, this is embarrassing. I am the most ignorant singer in the whole world. I will not tell anyone. I probably missed a lesson. I don't know, the day they taught about women composers at the Royal College of Music.

And the first thought that crossed my mind was this, oh, I bet this is just a big list.

It doesn't mean their work was any good. And then I was immediately shocked with my own thought because I went, what? Why did I think that? So I did what I thought at least my curiosity and these women deserved, and I started to look for their music, their names. And then I discovered one story, and another story, and another story. And then he became a joke in our house because my husband, he's an engineer and he loves music, but he's not his field. And every morning at breakfast, I would tell him, oh my God, you must listen to this. Do you know this woman? La, la, la, la, la. And then he was like, wow, so interesting this. And I was like that for, I think, almost a year. And then every rehearsal, you know, I was singing, I was performing, so I was talking to colleagues and I said, oh, do you know that composer? No.