CALDWELL, SARAH

born March 6, 1924, Maryville, Mo., U.S. American opera conductor, producer, and impresario, noted for her innovative productions of challenging and difficult works. Caldwell was a musical prodigy who before age 10 was giving public violin recitals. She graduated from high school at 14 and attended the University of Arkansas and the New England Conservatory of Music. She then served as chief assistant to Boris Goldovsky at the New England Opera Company for 11 years, and in the meantime she studied and taught opera at the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood, Massachusetts. Her first solo production was Ralph Vaughn Williams's Riders to the Sea in 1946. She headed the Boston University Opera Workshop from 1953 to 1957, and in 1957 she founded a permanent opera group, which eventually became known as the Opera Company of Boston, for that city. As conductor and producer there, Caldwell established a reputation for producing daring and inventive variants of standard works; her company gave the original performance versions of Giuseppe Verdi's Don Carlos and Modest Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov. She also produced the American premieres of such contemporary operas as Arnold Schoenberg's Moses und Aron, Luigi Nono's Intolleranza, and Paul Hindemith's Mathis der Maler. Her pursuit of meaningful character interpretations and her concern for both musical quality and visual appeal drew to her productions many of the greatest opera singers of the time. In 1976 Caldwell became the first woman conductor of a performance by the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, conducting Verdi's La Traviata with Beverly Sills in the title role. She also conducted performances by several major symphony orchestras.