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  • Challenges: A Memoir of My Life in Opera
  • Katharina Blassnigg (bio)
Challenges: A Memoir of My Life in Opera, by Sarah Caldwell, with Rebecca Matlock. Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, CT, U.S.A., 2008. 256 pp., illus. Hardcover. ISBN: 978-0-8195-6885-4.

Rebecca Matlock is a photographer and author who knew Sarah Caldwell (1924-2006) from 1987, served on the board of the Opera Company of Boston and worked with Caldwell on her memoirs for several years. For this publication, Matlock conducted numerous interviews that she translated into a first-person account in this biography, intercut with a few short sections in which she introduces her relationship with Caldwell and her biography.

Sarah Caldwell is known as an important person in the world of music: She was the first woman to conduct the Metropolitan Opera and was founder of the Opera Group in Boston, which later became the Opera Company of Boston. She frequently worked with famous artists such as Plácido Domingo, Renata Tibaldi, Joan Sutherland and Leonard Bernstein, was conversant with contemporary music and worked with contemporary composers such as Luigi Nono. She was engaged all over the world and in this book recounts some of her many travels, such as to the Soviet Union, South Africa, China, the Philippines and Russia. In this, it becomes paramount that Caldwell believed in the importance of communication between nations to bridge difficulties. She saw music as the ideal means for building friendships and improving understanding between different cultures. In hindsight, we can see this spirit emerge through her engagement with the organization of the festival Making Music Together, which was a cooperative project between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, divided in two parts: performances by musicians, dancers and composers from the Soviet Union in Boston, and performances by Americans in the Soviet Union.

Matlock's approach makes it clear that Sarah Caldwell did not intend to write a typical autobiography; rather she wanted to give a lively account of a life concerned with music and opera. Through her conversations with Matlock, Caldwell tells us of her memories, with an emphasis on unique moments in her experiences. Through her stories the reader can recognize her attitude and her way of working, including her tendency toward perfectionism, her attention to detail and the techniques she used to bring out her extraordinary productions. Instead of a chronological structure, Caldwell subdivided the timelines into a geographical place for each chapter (in Boston; beyond Boston—New York City, around America, etc.; outside the United States—Germany, China, Soviet Union, Russia; etc.), so that she sometimes compares productions that were separated by several years.

As will be very familiar to practitioners in any field, we learn that one of the first tasks Caldwell had to address at the very beginning of an opera production was fund-raising—she describes how there was not a day when she was not preoccupied with acquiring enough money for her productions. Because of the fact that the Opera Company was an independent organization and lacked a permanent "home" (as Caldwell describes the opera house), she had to look for the right places for the performances—Caldwell always tried to make the best out of the possibilities they had. For example, in 1970 they staged The Good Soldier Schweik by Robert Curka in an indoor athletic facility that served as both stage and auditorium. The audience was divided into six segments, while the performers used the whole place for their actions. Golf carts were dressed up as army vehicles. Several of these vehicles drove the musicians to the areas where performances took place. Others held closed-circuit television cameras. These transmitted the performer's actions live to three big screens on a platform in the center of the room (intercut with filmed footage of some of the singers as well as clips of World War I movies). In this way every participant was able to follow the action at all times.

To get a sense for the staging of an opera, Caldwell studied sketches of a wide range of historical artifacts: from eating utensils and furnishings to the whole way of life—such as clothes...

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