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Image from the White House

Sarah Caldwell
Opera Conductor
(1924-2006)

Early Life

 

Sarah Caldwell was born in Maryville, Missouri, on March 6th, 1924. During her childhood, Caldwell was a prodigy in mathematics and music. She began her study of the violin at the age of four, and her talents led to her performing before audiences and winning contests by age six. She was the daughter of Carrie Margaret Backer Caldwell, a pianist who studied at Julliard, and Ed Caldwell, though he passed away early in Sarah's life. Carrie soon remarried to  Dr. Henry Alexander, a professor political science at the University of Arkansas, and the family relocated to Arkansas. 


Caldwell did not let the challenges of her life stop her. She continued to excel in school and music. Every summer, she visited her aunt and uncle (Mr. and Mrs. Ed Woldert) in Maryville. During one of these visits as a child, Sarah won a local music contest using a cigar box guitar that she had created. She also travelled across the region, even as far as Chicago, to give performances as a child musical prodigy. Caldwell also had a prodigious intellect and graduated from Fayetteville High School in Arkansas at the age of fourteen.

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Life During College

 

After graduation, she attended the University of Arkansas, where her stepfather taught. During her junior year, she transferred to Hendrix College, where she finished her degree in 18 months. While at Hendrix, she organized a string quartet and played with the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, all before turning eighteen. After completing her degree in Fine Arts from Hendrix College, she attend the prestigious New England Conservatory of Music in Massachusetts. Even though she received several scholarships to study the violin, Caldwell's interests soon turned to conducting and opera. Conductor Serge Koussevitzky appointed Caldwell to be part of the opera faculty of at the Berkshire Music Center in Massachusetts.  

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Professional Life

 

In 1949 at the age of twenty-five, Sarah Caldwell broke ninety years of tradition when she became the first woman to conduct at the Massachusetts Worcester Musical Festival. It was also the first time Mozart’s “La Finta Giardiniera” was performed there. Caldwell later conducted the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphonic, and Pittsburgh Symphonic Orchestras. In 1957 she joined the faculty of Boston University, where she founded her own opera company in addition to her teaching commitments. Her work with the Opera Group of Boston helped turn Boston from a city that did not care about opera to one that, by 1975, attracted record crowds by 1975 and competed with cities like Chicago and San Francisco.


In 1965 Caldwell received the Rodgers and Hammerstein award, along with honorary doctorates from Boston College, Smith College, and Wheaton College. She travelled across the United States and to Europe and China to conduct operas. She toured steadily until 1991 when she gave her final opera performance.


In 1997 Sarah Caldwell was awarded the highest honor the federal government can bestow upon an artist; the National Medal of the Arts. President Bill Clinton presented this medal to Caldwell. In 1999 she joined the faculty of the University of Arkansas as head of the school's opera program and a distinguished professor of music. She worked there for several years before retiring in 2004. Sarah Caldwell died in 2006 but wrote about her time in the opera in a memoir titled Challenges: A Memoir of My Life in Opera. For those interested in more of her work, her version of the opera “Don Pasquale” can be heard on Spotify.

Resources

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