Sarah Caldwell (March 6, 1924March 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.

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 José Carreras and Judith Blegen. She appeared with the New York Philharmonic, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the 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 Lincoln Center staging of 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.

Personal life, death and legacy

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

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

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

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  • 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 ([https://web.archive.org/web/20070930165509/http://www.wikinfo.org/wiki.phtml?title=Sarah_Caldwell]) Sarah Caldwell, from Wikinfo, licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.

Bibliography

  • Challenges: A Memoir of My Life in Opera, by Sarah Caldwell (with Rebecca Matlock), Wesleyan University Press, 2008.
  • The Boston Opera Company 1909-1915, by Quaintance Eaton, Appleton-Century Press, (1965) New York.

References

  • The music makers; Sarah Caldwell. Boston, MA: University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC.
  • , with Beverly Sills (1976).
  • Sarah Caldwell, impresario of Boston opera, dead at 82 -- The Boston Globe
  • Sarah Caldwell, Indomitable Director of the Opera Company of Boston, Dies at 82 -- The New York Times
  • Opera Conductor and Impresario Sarah Caldwell, 82 -- The Washington Post
  • Memorial Service for Sarah Caldwell
  • Time Magazine November 10, 1975, cover article
  • Sarah Caldwell interview by Bruce Duffie, 1992