Once they enter the spot light of music theater, it seems like women composers such as Fanny Hensel (née Mendelssohn), Clara Schumann (née Wieck) or Alma Mahler (née Schindler) leave the shadows casted by the ‘great men’, indicated by their last names. Often using only their first names, the titles of those plays run the risk of making them appear ‘small’ on the one hand (even though they do not stand behind the ‘great composers’ anymore), but on the other hand they illustrate them as ‘independent’ (nevertheless they mostly appear in connection with them). The staging of a women composer often employs different roles: She does not only appear as a composer, but at the same time she is wife, widow, sister, daughter, mother, muse, femme fatale, star, student, teacher, performer etc. Does this reflect the change of perspective which musicological gender studies have called for (focusing on the cultural agency of women)? Or does music theater stand hereby in the tradition of a music historiography that clings to romantic idealization of the genius and its oeuvre? In what capacity do the works of the featured women composers appear in the musical language of the plays? And what purpose do the music and stories of the related men serve therein?

Applying methods from music theater- and performance research, musicological gender studies and music theory, the PhD-project analyzes music theater on women composers. The aim is to explore what solutions historiographical music theater finds, in order to write music history anew, and portray what woman composers had to say (particularly musically).