Hall of Honor Album - Fayetteville Public Schools

Sarah Caldwell, ‘39
A prodigy in mathematics and music at age 4, Sarah Caldwell graduated from
Fayetteville High School in 1939 at the age of 14. Trained as a violinist, she turned
down post college offers with major metropolitan symphonies to immerse herself in
opera studies and teaching.
Sarah went on to head Boston University’s opera workshop for ten years before
embarking in 1957 on the endeavor that would make her a master on the world stage:
the organization of the Opera Company of Boston. Producing old and new masterpieces
with scant funding and no concert hall, she created three decades of glorious and
innovative work against all odds. She brought the world’s greatest singers to her stages
to make ingenious magic in high school gyms, hockey rinks and parks, as well as
theaters and opera houses. Sarah pioneered new technologies such as film, blacklights
and lasers in her opera productions. As a conductor, she often committed entire scores
to memory; as a producer, her audacious stage effects remain burned on the memories
of her Boston audiences.
Sarah Caldwell relies not on genius alone; self driven and endowed with nerves of steel
and endless energy, she researches the historical, literary and musical aspects of her
productions exhaustively, and is known to literally live in the theater the last days before
a premiere during round the clock preparations. Undaunted in her 70’s, she took an
extended trip to guest conduct in Russia.
The first woman to conduct the New York Metropolitan Opera, holder of honorary
degrees from more than 25 universities including Harvard, Georgetown and Arkansas,
hailed as “Opera’s First Lady” (Newsweek), "the best opera director in the United
States" (Time cover story) a “national treasure” (The New Yorker), and holder of the
National Medal of Arts from the United States, Sarah Caldwell was described by U.S.
Senator Edward Brooke as “a dreamer, a genius, a most exciting woman.”
According to Sarah, “Opera is everything rolled into one - music, theater, the dance,
color and voices, and theatrical illusions; once in a while, when everything is right, there
is a moment of magic. People can live on moments of magic.”
Sarah passed away in March of 2006 in Maine after a long illness.