U.S. female Opera leader Caldwell dead at 82

updated 2:53 p.m. ET March 24, 2006

PORTLAND, Maine - Sarah Caldwell, hailed as the first lady of opera for her adventurous productions as longtime director of the Opera Company of Boston, died of heart failure. She was 82.

Caldwell died Thursday at Maine Medical Center, according to Jim Morgan, her longtime friend and colleague and the former manager of the Opera Company of Boston.

In more than 30 years as founder-director of the Boston company, she staged and conducted some 100 operas, ranging from baroque to avant-garde.

“Opera is everything rolled into one — music, theater, the dance, color and voices and theatrical illusions,” she told Life magazine in 1965. “Once in a while, when everything is just right, there is a moment of magic. People can live on moments of magic.”

In 1975, she became the first female conductor at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. In a cover story, Time magazine hailed her as “the best opera director in the United States.”

“Working day and night as her own conductor, administrative boss, stage director, talent hunter, principal researcher and fund raiser, she has become a symbol of the vigorous growth of opera in dozens of cities around the U.S.,” Time wrote. “She is also one of the great impresarios in all the American performing arts.”

She was extremely hardworking — sometimes rehearsing round the clock — and often eccentric. Profiles rarely failed to mention her nearly 300-pound heft, her tendency to lose whatever she was carrying, and the opera company’s checks, which frequently bounced.

She thought the picture a bit distorted — “the idea of a poor little match girl. Lonely. Strange. Only interested in going to libraries. It’s just so totally foreign to my nature,” she told the New York Daily News in a 1981 profile. “The stories probably make great reading if you don’t have to live with them. It did turn me into a bit of a cartoon.”

But she didn’t deny the hard work.

“Of course, I’m a fanatic,” she said. “And I’m often teased about misplacing things. I’m apt to be absent-minded about certain things. There is just so much a person can think about.”

Besides choosing standard works such as “Carmen” and “La Boheme,” Caldwell made her artistic reputation by producing unusual operas, world premieres, American premieres and original or variant editions of familiar works.

She sought out not only major stars, but emerging singers. And she brought unique theatrical touches to the material — having Beverly Sills accompanied by a music box with a mechanical, singing bird in “Barber of Seville.”

“Her best productions were as good as anything anybody’s ever seen anywhere,” Boston Globe music critic Richard Dyer once said. “She made it all exciting while meeting the highest musical standards.”

But the company had always operated on thin ice financially; for many years it lacked a permanent home and staged its productions in theaters or college auditoriums.

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