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With no money of her own to work with, she has extravagantly invested other people's in her productions. On occasion., she has had to raise the curtain on an unfinished set. Once a curtain went up an hour late while stagehands were assured that their checks would not bounce. Costumes have been left in pieces on the floor when designer racks were seized for nonpayment. Most of the time, generous supporters have managed to rescue her. There was, for example, the night the trucks rolled up from St. Louis with the sets for La Traviata. The C.O.D. charge was $9,600. Caldwell offered the drivers a check. They were not amused. What to do? She phoned an executive owner of Boston's Stop & Shop food chain, and a store manager obligingly made the rounds of the stores and returned with the needed amount in 10s and 20s stuffed into brown paper bags. Next morning all was well as Soprano Joan Sutherland arrived for her first rehearsal.
Caldwell's simple but consuming ambition is to give her fans a good evening of musical theater. "The fact is that great musical pieces take and hold the stage because they provide great emotional experiences," she says. So convinced, she relates everything to opera in general and her company in particular. In the days when a terrified city was on guard against the Boston Strangler, she remarked, "Wouldn't it be wonderful if they'd catch the strangler at the opera!"
She is absent-minded about anything not connected with her work and casual about her own money, as distinct from production funds. She has lost a small fortune in pocketbooks left in restaurants all over town. A friend once squeezed into her little car with Sarah and was startled to find $5 and $10 bills from a paper bag "floating all over the car and out the window" as they breezed down the turnpike. More concerned about her public image now, Sarah pays greater attention to her clothes. But only a few years ago, if a button popped on a blouse, she would simply pin it with a brooch. On really bad days she could be seen waddling through town with her entire chest hung with brooches of all description—medals of a long campaign.
With an initial nest egg of only $5,000, Caldwell's company began as the Opera Group of Boston in 1957. After a while, its home, the commodious Back Bay Theater, was torn down in favor of an apartment building. Unruffled, Caldwell marched on, and by 1965 the group had grown into a full-fledged company, and its name was changed. Today the Opera Company of Boston performs in the 2,000-seat Orpheum, a former vaudeville and movie house that has a stage only 26 ft. deep and no pit at all; the orchestra sits on the main floor. To conduct, Caldwell enters through a side door, pads down an aisle in slippers, and plops onto the canvas director's chair that serves as her podium.
In this and other unlikely showcases, Caldwell has staged the U.S. premieres of such diverse works as Berlioz's The Trojans, Schoenberg's Moses and Aron and Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie. With Caldwell, Sutherland appeared in the first U.S. staging of Bellini's IPuritani and the first since 1906 of Rossini's Sem-'iramide. Over a 13-year period, Soprano Sills has sung in 15 Caldwell productions. Marilyn Home, Tito Gobbi, Nicolai Gedda, Placido Domingo and Jon Vickers have all sung with her.