The Ballad of Baby Doe: Preview performance

Department of Music voice students with Stanford Light Opera Company present The Ballad of Baby Doe featuring Eugene Brancoveanu as Horace Tabor, with stage direction by Wendy Hillhouse and musical direction by Marie-Louise Catsalis.

When Baby Doe Tabor’s body was found frozen at Colorado’s Matchless Mine in 1935, the story of her romance with wealthy silver king Horace Tabor, his scandalous divorce from his first wife, Augusta, and the rise and fall of their fortunes exploded into popular legend. The Ballad of Baby Doe, the opera commissioned by the Central City Opera and premiered there in 1956, is now recognized as the first successful American opera. With its tuneful, popular style and soaring melodies, Baby Doe is a brilliant evocation of the mining era in the American West and a true portrait of life in Leadville, Denver, and even Washington, D.C. Strongly based in historical fact, it addresses Populism and the Free Silver movement, as well as boom-and-bust economic cycles, with appearances by presidential candidate and famed orator William Jennings Bryan and President Chester Arthur. Composer Douglas Moore’s and librettist John Latouche’s opera has been performed across America, including its West Coast premiere in 1957 at Stanford's brand-new Dinkelspiel Auditorium. | Presented with support from the Ben and A. Jess Shenson Funds. Project supported by Stanford Arts.

Other performances of Baby Doe in Dinkelspiel Auditorium this week:

– Friday, 7:30 pm (free preview for Stanford community)

– Saturday, 2:30 pm ($20 general | $10 students | $10 seniors)

– Sunday, 2:30 pm ($20 general | $10 students | $10 seniors)