Sarah Caldwell brings her internationally acclaimed talent full-circle upon return to University

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Sarah Caldwell, hailed by Newsweek as "Opera’s First Lady", has joined the University of Arkansas Music Department as a distinguished professor, effective with the fall semester. She will oversee the opera program.

Caldwell has been acclaimed "the best opera director in the United States" in a Time cover story, and "simply the single best thing in American Opera" by The New Yorker.

"We are very fortunate to attract someone with the international prestige and experience of Sarah Caldwell to our music faculty," said Chancellor John A. White. "She will be a tremendous ambassador for the University of Arkansas and the state."

Dr. Stephen Gates, chair of the music department, adds, "She will undoubtedly bring an unprecedented prestige to our music program and to the University.

"As a stage director and conductor, she has distinguished herself as a creative and gifted artist at the highest level of achievement, and now she has graciously agreed to share her vision of opera and its possibilities with our students, faculty and indeed our community," Gates said.

Caldwell’s association with the University of Arkansas began many years ago when her stepfather, Dr. Henry Alexander, was a University of Arkansas professor of government and political science. After graduating from Fayetteville High School, she attended the University as a psychology student. Caldwell later transferred to Hendrix University in Conway, Ark., and then went on to the New England Conservatory where she studied the violin under Richard Burgin, the concertmaster for the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

"It is safe to say that Sarah Caldwell is the first lady of opera," said Randall Woods, interim dean of the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. "Her addition to the music faculty will add immeasurably to the university and to the cultural life of the state."

In her visits to the University, Caldwell expressed enthusiasm for Chancellor White’s vision for the University of Arkansas and great appreciation for the music program.

"I believe the goals for this University and the intellectual diversity of the campus environment will provide a foundation for providing the highest quality of opera and music training for students." Caldwell is writing a book about the training and development of opera and music for young singers, directors and conductors. "In the process of writing a book on this subject, I have begun to realize I would really like to have a base from which to teach as well as perform," Caldwell said.

"I would like to help set up a center at the University of Arkansas where singers, stage directors, conductors and even entrepreneurs could receive high-level professional training while receiving the benefits of a university education as well," Caldwell said. "I look forward to working with the students and the University faculty to build something quite special in our profession."

Caldwell will continue commitments in Russia and Boston, thus sharing with her students and the faculty current experiences to which the music department would otherwise not be exposed, Gates said.

Having conducted opera and established programs around the world, Caldwell’s achievements are unrivaled. An extensive orchestral conducting schedule has found Caldwell on the podium of most major orchestras in the United States.

Most recently, she has been involved with a project to transcribe and publish 72 ancient Chinese and Japanese musical scrolls, found in Japan in the 1970s.

In January 1997, President and Mrs. Clinton presented Caldwell with the National Medal of Arts. The medal is the highest recognition by the federal government for achievement in the arts.

Caldwell’s musical studies began with the violin as a child. She went on to the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. It was there that she fell in love with opera. Before she was 20, she staged a performance of Vaughn Williams’s Riders to the Sea at Tanglewood, after which Serge Koussevitsky invited her to join the faculty of the Tanglewood Opera Department.

Caldwell also served as assistant to Boris Goldovsky at the New England Conservatory and shortly thereafter became head of the opera department at Boston University.

In 1957, with the help of a small group of Bostonians, she founded the Boston Opera Group-now The Opera Company of Boston. The company’s history boasts an impressive list of American and world premieres as well as offerings in the standard repertoire. It regularly attracts national and international attention for its innovative and brilliant stagings, its emphasis on musicological detail and performance standards of the highest quality.

The company’s achievements include U.S. premieres of Schoenberg’s Moses and Aaron, Prokoflev’s War and Peace, Berlioz’s The Trojans, Nono’s Intolleranza, Rameau’s Hippolyte Et Aricie, Tippett’s The Ice Break, Sessions’s MonteZuma, Zimmerman’s Die Soldaten, and Davies’s Taverner.

Caldwell’s commitment to her productions is legendary. She is impressaria, conductor and stage director. Research is an important element in the development of her productions, and it has taken her around the world.

During the 1975-76 season, Caldwell made her debut with the New York Philharmonic and in the same season became the first woman to conduct at the Metropolitan Opera (the production was La Traviata).

In February of 1976 she conducted the Pittsburgh Symphony in the world premiere of John La Montaine’s Be Glad Then America, which she also staged.

In the fall of 1976 she both staged and conducted an opera in New York for the first time, a production of The Barber of Seville at the New York City Opera.

The 1977 season included a return for Caldwell to the Metropolitan, where she conducted performances of Donizettie’s L’Elisir D’Amore.

In the summer of 1978 she conducted her first recording, Don Pasquale, featuring Beverly Sills, Donald Gramm, Alan Titus and Alfredo Kraus, on the Angel label.

For two seasons Caldwell served as music director of the Wolf Trap Festival in Washington D.C.

In the summer of 1981, Caldwell conducted performances of La Traviata with the Central Opera Theater of Beijing in China.

During the early 1980s she developed a new opera company in the Philippines that produced Mozart’s Magic Flute.

In 1987 she was honored by the American Israel Opera Foundation for her contributions toward the development of a richer operatic life in Israel.

In the spring of 1988 the first phase of a unique collaboration between Soviet and American creative and performing artists, both professional and students, took place in Boston under the artistic direction of Caldwell. "Making Music Together," a plan initiated by Caldwell and Soviet composer Rodion Shchedrin, featured a three-week festival of Soviet contemporary music and dance presentations in Boston.

In January of 1991, the second phase of "Making Music Together," an unprecedented festival of American music, took place in the Soviet Union during the first six months of the year, opening in Moscow under Caldwell’s artistic direction. Through the course of the festival she conducted several Soviet orchestras in programs of American works and staged and conducted Robert Di Domenica’s The Balcony at Bolshoi Theater.

The Sverdlovsk Philharmonic Orchestra of Ekaterinburg, Russia, named Caldwell Principal Guest Conductor in 1993. She has returned twice a year since then for concerts that have included important works of American composers as well as works form the European and Russian repertories.

In 1996 her work in Ekaterinburg included conducting the world premiere of Prokofiev’s Eugene Onegin. This musical-dramatic piece, a monumental collaboration of symphony orchestra, ballet and theater, was written in 1936, but banned by Soviet authorities before it could be performed.