The plot of “The Ballad of Baby Doe” is based on an irresistibly romantic history that places it among other great American tragedies. Amelia Earhart’s mysterious disappearance and the tragic Lindbergh baby kidnapping are other historical events that found our collective hearts and seemed to have permanently lodged there.
The Story
The beginning of the story involves a young, beautiful Elizabeth Bonduel McCourt Doe, who moved to Central City, Colorado with her first husband, Harvey Doe, divorced him, and then fell in love with the married, decades older, fabulously wealthy “Silver King” Horace Tabor. The glorious Rocky Mountains are a spectacular Wild West backdrop for events that revolved around the late 1800s-struggle between silver and gold as the foundation of our country’s currency.
The Opera
Douglas Moore’s two-act opera “The Ballad of Baby Doe” is an operatic retelling faithful to the actual history. John Latouche’s libretto captures the heart of the story with lyrics such as, “Gold is like the sun / But I am a child of the moon / And silver is the metal of the moon.” Baby Doe’s musical argument for silver ends with, “Gold is the sun / But silver, silver lies hidden in the core [sung on a high C] of dreams.”
Moore was born in 1893 on his grandfather’s farm in Cutchague, Long Island, New York. His operas are known for their American stories and folk-like tunes. They include school operettas such as “The Headless Horseman,” “The Devil and Daniel Webster,” and the Pulitzer Prize-winning opera “Giants in the Earth.” But “The Ballad of Baby Doe” is his most acclaimed musical work, and has the rare distinction of being one of the few American operas considered part of the standard repertory.
“It was the first opera commissioned by the Central City Opera House Association. It took CCO President Frank Ricketson two attempts to win approval to commission an original work, while admitting there was only a one-in-a-thousand chance of success, but he prevailed,” the CCO website says. Funding obtained from The Koussevitzky Music Foundation was essential to that success.
Moore shared some of his extensive historical research in an article “True Tales of the West,” which ran in the 1956 New York Times Sunday edition. “The events of the story run from 1880 to 1935. There are people in Leadville, Colorado and Denver who still remember Horace Tabor, his wife Augusta, and the young woman who caused the trouble between them, Elizabeth (Baby) Doe.” Tabor grubstaked a couple of miners who found a rich vein of silver. “Tabor, as partner, became a millionaire within a year. From that point he rapidly became the richest man in Colorado, mayor of Leadville, Lt. Governor of Colorado.” Moore continued, “This dramatic and touching story makes an ideal outline for an opera libretto. Many incidents can be used exactly as they happened.”
Opera star Beverly Sills’s career was launched by her much-lauded performance as Baby Doe in the 1958 New York City Opera’s premiere of the work. In her book “Beverly,” she recalled, “One of the highlights of that season would be the New York premiere of ‘The Ballad of Baby Doe,’ a marvelous work by Douglas Moore. Then sixty-five, Moore continued to get better as he got older.”
She recalled limited rehearsal time to the extent that “even though [they] rushed like crazy, [they] never found time for a stage rehearsal of the opera’s last scene, in which [she] sang Baby Doe’s final aria.”
Sills said that, on opening night, “Matters were clicking along magnificently, and then I suddenly found myself singing Baby Doe’s final aria. ... I had no idea what to do. A spotlight was shining straight into my eyes.” She looked at conductor Emerson Buckley, who motioned for her to walk backward and sit down. Singing the entire time, she did so. “I was very curious to see where it would all lead. Stage snow started falling on me. No one had bothered to tell me the opera ends with Baby Doe huddled down in a snow storm.”
Moore’s life ended close to where it began. He died in 1969 in Greenport, Long Island, not far from the family farm in Cutchagoe, where he also wrote Baby Doe Tabor’s opera.
