Caldwell moved to Boston, Massachusetts, in 1952 and became head of the Boston University opera workshop. In 1957 she started the Boston Opera Group with $5,000. This became the Opera Company of Boston, where she staged a wide range of operas and established a reputation for producing difficult works under pressure. She was also known for putting together interesting variations on standard operas.
Productions with Opera Company Boston and related companies
Highlights in Boston that she conducted and/or stage directed included Le voyage de la lune, Otello, Command Performance, Manon and Faust, Lulu, I puritani, Intolleranza, Boris Godunov, Hippolyte et Aricie, La bohème, Moses und Aron, The Rake's Progress, Bluebeard's Castle, Carmen, Macbeth, The Good Soldier Schweik, The Fisherman and His Wife, La finta giardiniera, Norma, Les Troyens, Don Carlos, Don Quichotte, War and Peace, Benvenuto Cellini, I Capuleti e i Montecchi, Montezuma, Ruslan and Ludmila, Rigoletto, Stiffelio, La damnation de Faust, Tosca, La vide breve, El retablo de maese Pedro, The Ice Break, Aïda, Die Soldaten, The Invisible City of Kitezh, Taverner, The Makropoulos Case, Médée, Dead Souls, Der Rosenkavalier and, finally, The Balcony. In the 1980s, Opera New England, a branch of Ms. Caldwell's Opera Company of Boston, was the touring ambassador of opera to the New England states. She employed young professional singers in productions that were fully staged and with orchestra. She organized financing through local, state and federal funding which included the National Endowment for the Arts, Massachusetts Council of the Arts & Humanities, Connecticut Commission on the Arts, New Hampshire Commission of the Arts and the Maine Commission on the Arts & Humanities.
Productions in New York, Pennsylvania and Minnesota
At the New York City Opera, Caldwell staged Der junge Lord and Ariadne auf Naxos, both in 1973. She became the second woman to conduct the New York Philharmonic in 1974 with an all-female programme of composers including Ruth Crawford Seeger, Lili Boulanger and Thea Musgrave. On 13 January 1976, Caldwell became the first female conductor at the Metropolitan Opera, with La traviata. In 1976, she both conducted and directed Il barbiere di Siviglia, which was televised over PBS. She also directed John La Montaine's U.S. Bicentennial opera Be Glad Then, America with Odetta, Donald Gramm, Richard Lewis, David Lloyd, and the Penn State University Choirs and the Pittsburgh Symphony. In 1978, she led L'elisir d'amore at the Metropolitan, with José Carreras and Judith Blegen. She appeared with the New York Philharmonic, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In 1979 she conducted and directed a televised production of Falstaff. Caldwell also directed one non-musical production, the 1981 Lincoln Center staging of Shakespeare's Macbeth, presented on cable TV in 1982. It starred Philip Anglim and Maureen Anderman, with a then-unknown Kelsey Grammer in the supporting role of Ross.
Learn everything you can, anytime you can, from anyone you can - there will always come a time when you will be grateful you did.
If you approach an opera as though it were something that always went a certain way, that's what you get. I approach an opera as though I didn't know it.
If you can sell green toothpaste in this country, you can sell opera.
Success is important only to the extent that it puts one in a position to do more things one likes to do.
