November 28, 2008

Sarah Caldwell: Larger Than Life, but Lost to Memory

By PHILIP KENNICOTT

The cover of Daniel Kessler's new biography of Sarah Caldwell, the conductor and impresario who for dec-ades was the most successful woman in the upper echelons of American opera, uses exactly the same photograph as Caldwell's newly published memoir, edited by Rebecca Matlock. The two books appeared within weeks of each other, and both show the woman who built the Opera Company of Boston into a national powerhouse in a typical pose: at the podium, a huge score in front of her, baton raised