t should be obvious: Yes, women compose opera. Fantastic opera. And they have done so throughout the entire 400-year history of the art form. If this still surprises anyone, it is likely because older opera composed by women is almost never performed in this country.

Leafing through the Danish Composers’ Society’s recent Repertoire Statistics for the 22/23 and 23/24 seasons, one chart in particular leaps off the page: the gender distribution in opera composed before 1994. It shows that a microscopic 0.3% of the total opera output – 982 hours and 12 minutes – was composed by a woman. Just over three hours of music in total – about the same as half a Wagner premiere.