While soprano Dame Kiri Te Kanawa rightly takes center stage today, as the musical world showers her with rose petals for her 80th birthday, spare a piece of cake for Sarah Caldwell.
Today marks the 100th anniversary of Caldwell’s birth. With her own hands, she molded the Opera Company of Boston, for 32 years an organization distinguished by its bold programming, insightful productions, and esteemed singers (including Beverly Sills, Joan Sutherland, Shirley Verrett, Marilyn Horne, Jon Vickers, and James McCracken).
Caldwell tackled works that struck fear in the hearts of major companies, operas such as Prokofiev’s “War and Peace,” Schoenberg’s “Moses und Aaron,” Roger Sessions’ “Montezuma,” Peter Maxwell Davies’ “Taverner,” and Rodion Shchedrin’s “Dead Souls.” She spearheaded the first complete American staging of Berlioz’s “Les Troyens.” She was also the first in the U.S. to employ Mussorgsky’s original orchestrations for “Boris Godunov.”
She had her detractors, to be sure. For many of her productions in Boston, she served not only as conductor, but as stage director. Some felt this diluted her powers, but there is no questioning her magnificent ambition. On a shoestring budget, she drove her team as hard as she pushed herself, which was very hard indeed. Often it led to its share of backstage drama and cost overruns.
Caldwell became the first woman to conduct at the Metropolitan Opera (in “La traviata” in 1976, with Sills). The same year, a production of “The Barber of Seville” (again with Sills) was televised over PBS. In 1978, she returned to the Met to conduct “L’elisir d’amore,” with José Carreras and Judith Blegen.
A non-operatic highlight, surely, was when she joined the New York Philharmonic for a program of women composers – in 1974! – as only the second woman ever to conduct the orchestra (Nadia Boulanger was the first, in 1939 and 1962), presenting works by Ruth Crawford Seeger, Lili Boulanger, and Thea Musgrave. Time Magazine dubbed her “Music’s Wonder Woman.”
She also conducted the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Caldwell founded the organization that became the Opera Company of Boston (originally known as the Opera Group) in 1958, with $5000.
She didn’t have the best head for money and she could be politically naïve. In Boston, a cultural exchange with the Soviet Union tanked at the box office. Later, she entered into an agreement with the Marcos regime to bring opera to the Philippines. To her credit, she pulled out of the deal, but it brought her some bad publicity.
In 1993, at 68, she became principal guest conductor of the Sverdlovsk Philharmonic Orchestra of Ekaterinburg, Russia.
Clearly, Caldwell was a force of nature.
She died in 2006 at the age of 82.
Caldwell conducts “The Barber of Seville” at the Met (with Sills, Alan Titus, Donald Gramm, Henry Price, and Samuel Ramey)
Hindemith, again with Sills, in Boston – oh my goodness, unless I’m very much mistaken, Aaron Copland provides the spoken addendum, at around 12:20!
“Otello” with Vickers and Verrett
“Norma” excerpts with Sills and John Alexander
A Musical Adventure in Siberia
Shostakovich Cello Concerto
Interviewed by Bruce Duffie
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