Margaret Hillis Conducting in 1956

http://community.ascap.com/_Wife39s-Aria-There-You-Go-from-LIMA-BEANS-1955-by-Douglas-Townsend/AUDIO/829199/27521.html

This is an audio of soprano Halley Gilbert singing the Wife's Aria from the one-act opera LIMA BEANS by Dougles Townsend. This is an important opera in that the premier of this opera was conducted by Margaret Hillis in 1956. She got her first big successful breakthrough in 1954 when she was asked to prepare a chorus for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Two years later, despite the ideas of her composition teacher, she conducted an orchestra in a premier of an opera. She overcame the odds set forth by her that women could only conduct choral music and had no place in the orchestral conducting world. She was one of the first women to prove women can conduct orchestras just as well as men can.