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Sarah Caldwell | |
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| Born | (1924-03-06)March 6, 1924 Maryville, Missouri, U.S. |
| Died | March 23, 2006(2006-03-23) (aged 82) Portland, Maine, U.S. |
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Sarah Caldwell (March 6, 1924 – March 23, 2006) was an Americanoperaconductor,impresario, and stage director.
Caldwell was born inMaryville, Missouri, and grew up inFayetteville, Arkansas.[1] She was a child prodigy and gave public performances on theviolin by the time she was ten years old. She graduated fromFayetteville High School at the age of 14.
Caldwell graduated fromHendrix College in 1944 and attended theUniversity of Arkansas as well as theNew England Conservatory of Music. She won a scholarship as aviola player at theBerkshire Music Center in 1946. In 1947, she stagedVaughan Williams'sRiders to the Sea.[1] For 11 years she served as the chief assistant toBoris Goldovsky.
Caldwell moved toBoston,Massachusetts, in 1952 and became head of theBoston University opera workshop. In 1957 she started theBoston Opera Group with $5,000.[2] This became theOpera 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.
Highlights in Boston that she conducted and/or stage directed includedLe voyage de la lune,Otello (withTito Gobbi as Iago),Command Performance (world premiere),Manon andFaust (both withBeverly Sills andNorman Treigle),Lulu (U.S. East Coast premiere),I puritani (with DameJoan Sutherland),Intolleranza (U.S. premiere),Boris Godunov (original version),[1]Hippolyte et Aricie (U.S. stage premiere, withPlácido Domingo),La bohème (withRenata Tebaldi and Domingo),Moses und Aron (U.S. premiere),The Rake's Progress,Bluebeard's Castle,Carmen (withMarilyn Horne),Macbeth (original version),The Good Soldier Schweik,The Fisherman and His Wife (world premiere, withMuriel Costa-Greenspon),La finta giardiniera,Norma (with Sills),Les Troyens,[1]Don Carlos (U.S. premiere of original French version),Don Quichotte,War and Peace (U.S. stage premiere, withArlene Saunders),Benvenuto Cellini (U.S. premiere, withJon Vickers),I Capuleti e i Montecchi,Montezuma (U.S. premiere),Ruslan and Ludmila (U.S. premiere),Rigoletto (with Sills,Richard Fredricks, andSusanne Marsee),Stiffelio (U.S. stage premiere),La damnation de Faust,Tosca (withMagda Olivero),La vide breve,El retablo de maese Pedro,The Ice Break (U.S. premiere),Aïda (withShirley Verrett in the title role andMarkella Hatziano as Amneris),Die Soldaten (U.S. premiere),The Invisible City of Kitezh,Taverner (U.S. premiere),The Makropoulos Case (withAnja Silja,William Cochran, andChester Ludgin),Médée (in French and Greek withJosephine Barstow in the title role andMarkella Hatziano as Neris),Dead Souls (U.S. premiere),Der Rosenkavalier (with DameGwyneth Jones) and, finally,The Balcony (world premiere, 1990).
In the 1980s, Opera New England, a branch of Ms. Caldwell'sOpera 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 theNational 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.
At theNew York City Opera, Caldwell stagedDer junge Lord andAriadne auf Naxos (withCarol Neblett), both in 1973.
She became the second woman to conduct theNew York Philharmonic in 1974 with an all-female programme of composers includingRuth Crawford Seeger,Lili Boulanger andThea Musgrave.[1]
On 13 January 1976, Caldwell became the first female conductor at theMetropolitan Opera, withLa traviata (with Sills).[3][1][4]
In 1976, she both conducted and directedIl barbiere di Siviglia (with Sills andAlan Titus), which was televised over PBS. She also directedJohn La Montaine's U.S. Bicentennial operaBe Glad Then, America withOdetta (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 ledL'elisir d'amore at the Metropolitan, withJosé Carreras andJudith Blegen. She appeared with theNew York Philharmonic, thePittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, theSt. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and theBoston Symphony Orchestra.
In 1979 she conducted and directed a televised production ofFalstaff (withDonald Gramm).
Caldwell also directed one non-musical production, the 1981Lincoln Center staging ofShakespeare'sMacbeth, presented on cable TV in 1982. It starredPhilip Anglim andMaureen Anderman, with a then-unknownKelsey Grammer in the supporting role of Ross.
In 1975 Caldwell received aD.F.A. fromBates College. In 1997 she received theNational Medal of Arts.[2] She has been inducted into the Arkansas Entertainers Hall of Fame.[5]
Sarah Caldwell lived for a time at the architecturally significantLincoln House in Lincoln, Massachusetts.[6]
Caldwell retired in 2004.[7] She died in 2006 fromheart failure atMaine Medical Center inPortland, Maine.[1][2] She is remembered on theBoston Women's Heritage Trail.[8]
Adapted from the article ([1])Sarah Caldwell, fromWikinfo, licensed under theGNU Free Documentation License.
