Emma Roberto Steiner

Emma Roberta Steiner was an American composer and conductor. She was one of the first women in the United States to make a living from conducting, and did so at more than 6,000 performances during her lifetime. She was additionally the first woman to conduct a Theatre orchestra in New York. Her career spanned nearly five decades, from the 1870s, when she first began conducting for touring comic opera companies, until her death in 1929. In the early 1900s, she took a decade-long hiatus from her musical career to move to Alaska, where she was a prospector and traveler. Steiner wrote hundreds of musical pieces, including seven operas.