Sarah Caldwell

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For the American author, see Sara Caldwell.
Sarah Caldwell
Born(1924-03-06)March 6, 1924
Maryville, Missouri, U.S.
DiedMarch 23, 2006(2006-03-23) (aged 82)
Portland, Maine, U.S.
NationalityAmerican
Education
Occupations
  • Opera conductor
  • impresario
  • stage director

Sarah Caldwell (March 6, 1924 – March 23, 2006) was an American opera conductor, impresario, and stage director.

Early life

Caldwell was born in Maryville, Missouri, and grew up in Fayetteville, Arkansas.[1] She was a child prodigy and gave public performances on the violin by the time she was ten years old. She graduated from Fayetteville High School at the age of 14.

Caldwell graduated from

Berkshire Music Center in 1946. In 1947, she staged Vaughan Williams's Riders to the Sea.[1] For 11 years she served as the chief assistant to Boris Goldovsky
.

Career

Caldwell moved to

Boston Opera Group with $5,000.[2] This became the Opera Company of Boston, where she staged a wide range of operas and established a reputation for producing difficult works under pressure.[1]
She was also known for putting together interesting variations on standard operas.

Productions with Opera Company Boston and related companies

Highlights in Boston that she conducted and/or stage directed included Le voyage de la lune,

The Makropoulos Case (with Anja Silja, William Cochran, and Chester Ludgin), Médée (in French and Greek with Josephine Barstow in the title role and Markella Hatziano as Neris), Dead Souls (U.S. premiere), Der Rosenkavalier (with Dame Gwyneth Jones
) and, finally, The Balcony (world premiere, 1990).

In the 1980s, Opera New England, a branch of Ms. Caldwell's Opera Company of Boston, was the touring ambassador of opera to the New England states. She employed young professional singers in productions that were fully staged and with orchestra. She organized financing through local, state and federal funding which included the National Endowment for the Arts, Massachusetts Council of the Arts & Humanities, Connecticut Commission on the Arts, New Hampshire Commission of the Arts and the Maine Commission on the Arts & Humanities.

Productions in New York, Pennsylvania and Minnesota

At the New York City Opera, Caldwell staged Der junge Lord and Ariadne auf Naxos (with Carol Neblett), both in 1973.

She became the second woman to conduct the New York Philharmonic in 1974 with an all-female programme of composers including Ruth Crawford Seeger, Lili Boulanger and Thea Musgrave.[1]

On 13 January 1976, Caldwell became the first female conductor at the Metropolitan Opera, with La traviata (with Sills).[3][1][4]

In 1976, she both conducted and directed Il barbiere di Siviglia (with Sills and Alan Titus), which was televised over PBS. She also directed John La Montaine's U.S. Bicentennial opera Be Glad Then, America with Odetta (Muse for America), Donald Gramm (various patriots), Richard Lewis (King George III), David Lloyd (Town Crier), and the Penn State University Choirs and the Pittsburgh Symphony.

In 1978, she led L'elisir d'amore at the Metropolitan, with

St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra
.

In 1979 she conducted and directed a televised production of Falstaff (with Donald Gramm).

Caldwell also directed one non-musical production, the 1981

Shakespeare's Macbeth, presented on cable TV in 1982. It starred Philip Anglim and Maureen Anderman, with a then-unknown Kelsey Grammer
in the supporting role of Ross.

Awards

In 1975 Caldwell received a D.F.A. from Bates College. In 1997 she received the National Medal of Arts.[2] She has been inducted into the Arkansas Entertainers Hall of Fame.[5]

Personal life, death and legacy

Sarah Caldwell lived for a time at the architecturally significant Lincoln House in Lincoln, Massachusetts.[6]

Caldwell retired in 2004.[7] She died in 2006 from heart failure at Maine Medical Center in Portland, Maine.[1][2] She is remembered on the Boston Women's Heritage Trail.[8]

Studio discography

  • Donizetti: Don Pasquale (Sills, Kraus, Titus, Gramm; Caldwell, 1978) EMI

Videography

  • Rossini: Il barbiere di Siviglia (Sills, H.Price, Titus, Gramm, Ramey; Caldwell, Caldwell, 1976) [live]

Quotes

  • Learn everything you can, anytime you can, from anyone you can - there will always come a time when you will be grateful you did.
  • If you approach an opera as though it were something that always went a certain way, that's what you get. I approach an opera as though I didn't know it.
  • If you can sell green toothpaste in this country, you can sell opera.
  • Success is important only to the extent that it puts one in a position to do more things one likes to do.

Adapted from the article ([1]) Sarah Caldwell, from

Wikinfo, licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License
.

Bibliography

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h AnthonyTommasini (24 March 2006). "Sarah Caldwell, First Woman to Conduct at the Met, Dies at 82". New York Times. Retrieved 10 January 2019.
  2. ^ a b c Richard Dyer. "Sarah Caldwell, impresario of Boston opera, dead at 82". Boston Globe. Retrieved 10 January 2019.
  3. ^ Robert Jones (1976). "Walking Into the Fire". Opera News. Retrieved 10 January 2019.
  4. ^ G. W. Bowersock (March 2009). "Beverly Sills Greenough 25 May 1929 · 2 July 2007". Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 153 (1): 89–95.
    JSTOR 40541633
    .
  5. ^ "Sarah Caldwell (1924–2006)". The Encyclopedia of Arkansas. Retrieved 10 January 2019.
  6. ^ "Heroic Brutalism and the Lincoln House and Studio". Modern Mass. December 27, 2018. Retrieved July 10, 2021.
  7. ^ "Sarah Caldwell | American opera conductor and producer". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2019-06-20.
  8. ^ "Chinatown/South Cove". Boston Women's Heritage Trail.

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sarah_Caldwell&oldid=1218507225"