Music: Boston Picks a Woman

A woman playing first flute in the Boston Symphony? "A very serious matter," wrote Critic Rudolph Elie in the Herald, "and I am not a little dismayed by it." But there she was, when the orchestra opened its season last week, her flute tones firm, pure and accurate.

Perky, dimpled Doriot Anthony, 30, knows as well as anybody that the major orchestras eye female instrumentalists with suspicion (unless they play the harp†). She has held such positions as second flute in Washington's National Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, first flute in the NBC Standard (Los Angeles) and Hollywood Bowl Symphonies.

She had...