(6 of 7)
She obliged by enrolling as a psychology major at the University of Arkansas. But within a year and a half, she moved on to Hendrix College in Arkansas to study with a violin teacher named David Robertson. A year and a half after that, she won a scholarship at the New England Conservatory of Music to study with Richard Burgin, who was also the concertmaster of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. If Burgin's blunt recollection these days is any indication, Sarah got a shock. Says Burgin: "She wasn't particularly talented on violin, and I suggested she study some other line of music."
Sarah was soon studying viola with Boston Symphony Violist Georges Flourel, who apparently had a higher opinion of her talent. In 1946 she won a scholarship to play viola in the student orchestra at Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony. "It was a place where gods strode the earth," says Caldwell quite seriously. Her particular idol was Conductor Serge "200%" to Koussevitsky, their who own urged work the but made it students to clear that apply they themselves should not miss any of his concerts. Sarah wore T shirts, heavy shoes that clunked, straight hair to the nape of the neck, and, as she recalls, "had more fun at Tanglewood than anywhere else."
It was there in 1947 that Sarah staged "my lucky piece," Vaughan Williams' Riders to the Sea, a one-act opera based on J.M. Synge's melancholy play. "Koussevitsky came backstage, and that was very nice, and the next summer I was invited to join the faculty," she says. A major influence on Caldwell during that period was Boris Goldovsky, who headed the opera department at the New England Conservatory and, in the U.S. at least, was a solitary champion of the concept of opera as theater. Sarah served as Goldovsky's assistant, even writing scripts for his intermission programs during the Met radio broadcasts.
Caldwell was too strong a personality to stay on. In 1952 she was hired as head of the Boston University opera workshop and over the next eight years developed a full-fledged opera department within the school. When she left in 1960 after her opera company had been established, not all her colleagues were heartbroken. Then as now, she involved her staff in everything—including driving her to Chinatown for post-rehearsal suppers. One of her former students recalls that Caldwell was already traveling a lot and often did not get back in time for classes, "so she got in the habit of taping her lectures on the road and mailing them back."
The momentum of Caldwell's career has paralleled the upsurge of what used to be referred to as regional opera. Today it seems more accurate simply to call it American opera, because the scene is so vital and diverse. In the U.S., it was not the Met that first performed the Ring cycle within a week as Wagner intended, but the Seattle Opera (TIME, Aug. 4). Who gave the American stage premiere of Handel's memorable Baroque opera Rinaldol The Houston Grand Opera (TIME, Nov. 3). Dvorak's wondrously melodic Rusalka will be introduced to the U.S. next month not in New York but in San Diego.