Frieda Belinfante was a conductor who founded the Orange County Philharmonic in California, but her amazing life story begins a world away, in Amsterdam in 1904. Frieda’s father was a well-known pianist and Frieda began playing cello at the age of 10. She studied music at the Amsterdam Conservatory and made her professional concert debut when she was 17. While studying cello, Frieda was also establishing herself as a conductor, leading chamber groups while in school and after graduation. In 1937, the managers of the Concertgebouw, the famous concert hall in Amsterdam, invited Frieda to form a chamber orchestra. Frieda founded Het Klein Orkest and was its artistic director and conductor for four years, making her the first woman in Europe to hold these positions for a professional orchestral ensemble. Frieda’s burgeoning career was halted by the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands in 1940. As a member of a prominent Jewish family and as a lesbian, Frieda had much to fear from the Nazis. But she was determined to fight and became a member of the Dutch resistance, helping to forge documents and participating in the planning of the bombing of the Amsterdam city registry office, an attempt to destroy original records so that they could not be used to detect the forged documents so many depended upon. After the bombing, Frieda was forced into hiding and disguised herself as a man for three months to avoid detection. She had a harrowing escape from Amsterdam to Switzerland, crossing the Alps on foot, and only being allowed to stay in Switzerland when a former teacher, the conductor Hermann Scherchen, confirmed her identity. In Switzerland she worked as a farm laborer and was repatriated to the Netherlands at the end of the war, but she had become disillusioned with her home country and decided to emigrate to the United States in 1947. In America, Frieda returned to her music career. She moved to California and took a job in the music department at UCLA. She started a small orchestral ensemble called the Vine Street Players in 1953. The group was successful and local leaders asked Frieda to establish a permanent group for the county. Frieda founded and became the artistic director and conductor of the Orange County Philharmonic Society Orchestra. The Orchestra gained in stature over the years and Frieda made appearances as a guest conductor in the United States and Europe. Despite the orchestra’s success, in 1962 Frieda was not renewed as conductor. She believed that the board’s desire for a male conductor and objections to her lesbianism were among the reasons for her removal. Frieda continued to teach music and to act as a board member and advisor to the Laguna Beach Chamber Music Society. As she became older, Frieda’s accomplishments finally began being recognized. Orange County and Laguna Beach declared February 19, 1987, Frieda Belinfante Day and in 1994, Frieda’s story was featured in an exhibit by the Dutch government about the persecution of gays and lesbians during World War II. And in 1999, four years after her death, the story of her remarkable life became the subject of the well-received documentary film But I Was A Girl.

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