Every production of is a major event at . Composer Douglas Moore’s tale of romance and ruin in Colorado’s early days put the little company on the map when it premiered there in 1956, before taking its immortal place in the standard repertory of American opera.
“Baby Doe” is Central City’s claim to fame — its defining gesture — and when the company brings the title back every decade or so, itap more than nostalgia. The opera serves as a sort of ruler by which you can measure the progress of both the organization and the art form overall.
The good news: Both appear to be thriving — and with the same strategy of staying nimble and strategically redefining what they mean to Colorado.
This season’s effort is right in sync with the way opera is done in 2016. Director Ken Cazan availed himself t
Scholars have dug deeply into the life of Horace Tabor, who amassed a Leadville mining fortune before scandalizing society with a divorce from his wife, Augusta, and a marriage to the alluring Baby Doe McCourt.
A primary source was Judy Nolte Temple’s 2009 biography “Baby Doe Tabor: The Madwoman in the Cabin,” which was based on the tragic letters Baby Doe wrote during her final, impoverished years, when she holed up alone in Horace’s failed Matchless Mine, where she eventually froze to death in 1935.
The material inspired an edgier reading of the story.
“The idea is that, we’ve come so far, and if you’re going to do a typical ‘Baby Doe,’ why bother?” said Cazan.
So there was a lot of shading developed for lead soprano Anna Christy and other singers who bring their own contemporary talents to the moment as products of the recent trend at music schools to teach acting in equal part to singing.
Their dramatics will be underscored by tech-savvy projections, a rarity at Central City, but that will allow for an opening up of a saga that is set in one of the most beautiful landscapes in the country.
The projections also enable a more psychological rendering than in the past, with moody dives into both the joy and trauma of the characters. Cazan describes this “Baby Doe” as a dreamy memory play with “nothing literal” in the sets.
That will be a major shift for , but the company has made change a constant in recent years as it works to stay current and continue to draw audiences at a time when the art form faces well-known audience challenges.
Central City, with an impressive 84 years in the opera business, still has a core mission of presenting traditional works at its historic, 550-seat headquarters in the hills, but it does plenty of outreach to new audiences, including this year, doing everything in English and touring performances of one-act operas across the region.
And the company can be inventive. For example, this season it will go to the Denver Art Museum to present composer John Musto’s recent “Later the Same Evening,” which has characters from famous Edward Hopper paintings come alive to sing their stories. Tickets will be a reasonable $30.
Itap a strategy meant to combat the things Central City Opera general/artistic director Pat Pearce hears about why people don’t attend opera: that itap too long, too expensive and too hard to understand in foreign languages.
There’s something of a compromise in that. Purists, for example, might object to this season’s “The Impresario,” which will be translated from Mozart’s original German into English. There’s some pandering in the fact that the traveling shows are quick set ups, and that they’re being kept conveniently short, at about an hour each.
Pearce recognizes the company’s offbeat tactics, but he says the work is carefully curated to stay true to its composer’s intentions and that the traveling shows will be staged with as much care as the opera house productions.“The theater part has to be just as complete as the music part for people to go on that journey with you,” he said.
Plus, he stresses, itap all in the name of keeping opera alive. Last season, Central City experimented by taking shows to Colorado Springs and Fort Collins. The efforts did well at the box office, and the company estimates that as much as 50 percent of the audience was new to opera.
That adds to the pressure of keeping standards high. Short and cheap might get newcomers in the door, but they have to be wowed if the company wants to turn them into regular customers.
“The work has to be the thing that holds them in the end,” said Pearce. “If itap good enough, interesting enough, exciting enough, some of those people will get the bug.”
Central City Opera’s 2016 season runs from July 9-Aug. 7 at various locations. For tickets and info, go to centralcityopera.org or call 303-292-6700