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She later studied with Ilya Musin in St Petersburg; the great Russian \"guru\" of conductors taught plenty of women. \"He was criticised for doing so - but he took no notice,\" she remarks. Back in Britain she began to build her career in a variety of ways, not least through work as an opera prompter, often at the Royal Opera House. Prompters used to - and sometimes still do - lurk under the front of the stage to cue the singers in with the right words at the right moment. \"It's one of the best trainings for an opera conductor,\" [Alice Farnham] says.

Although New York-born [Marin Alsop] won high praise for the event, beforehand the head of the Paris Conservatoire, Bruno Mantovani, pondered whether conducting was too \"physically demanding\" for most women. More eyebrow-raising still was the view of Vasily Petrenko, principal conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, who ventured that \"a cute girl on a podium means that musicians think about other things\". \"If I'd known then how little would change in 20 years I would have been surprised, and it does make me rather sad,\" [Alice Farnham] said. \"I was also surprised at myself for having been a little bit complacent about it, and thinking that's just the way it is, maybe conducting is just something not many women want to do.\" \"We thought: how can we challenge these ideas?\" said Andrea Brown, Morley's director of music. \"It's about celebrating role models and equal opportunities, but it's also about putting that initial germ of an idea into a girl's mind, that this could be for me. We wanted to give them a safe place to have a go. There's no sense they have to achieve anything in particular. It's a bit of an experiment to see how they respond, and if conducting is something they might consider.\"

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\"He embodied the music he was conducting. I remember one class when one student conducted the Finale of Tchaikovsky's Pathetique Symphony. When [Ilya Musin] demonstrated the end of the movement, I was seriously worried for his health, hearing and seeing the heart-beats of the music gradually come to a halt. Fortunately the next student conducted Nutcracker and Musin instantly became a young child!\" Perhaps the situation for women conductors is still precarious enough in the West, but how are they perceived in Russia? \"It's a complicated situation there - full of contradictions, as is the case with many things in Russia. In Soviet times they believed that everyone should be given equal opportunities in the workplace. The reality wasn't always quite so equal in some quarters though. Musin always had some female conductors in his class, though his colleagues often criticised him for this. My experience of studying and working there was generally positive.\"

The appointment made headlines, especially after Vasily Petrenko, the principal conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and chief conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic, told a Norwegian newspaper that orchestras \"react better when they have a man in front of them,\" and that \"a cute girl on a podium means that musicians think about other things.\" He went on to say that once female conductors go on to have families, it was difficult for them to be as dedicated to their profession. \"I got them running onto the platform and got them laughing, saying, 'Be the worst actors you can be, really ham it up,\"' said Alma Sheehan, a coach who has been a part of the workshops since the 2014 pilot program. \"I got them thinking about breathing and told them not to think about it as preperformance nerves but as a buzz.\" Anna Krause, a doctoral student in music composition from Missouri, said the weekend lit a fire under her to seek more conducting opportunities in the future. \"I think the biggest change I saw was in confidence,\" she said. \"It really struck me how apologetic everyone's manner was in the beginning, and I am not sure why that is, but it was the coolest change. And with something like conducting, that makes such a difference because you are up there in very much a leadership role and how you present yourself has a huge effect on the result you are going to get.\"