Soprano Tracy Dahl, seen here in last year’s Rigoletto, returns to Calgary Opera in The Ballad of Baby Doe
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Calgarians have come to expect Calgary Opera’s yearly winter offering of a new, intriguing and contemporary work. On Saturday, January 26, the curtain will rise on the Canadian première of The Ballad of Baby Doe, by Douglas Moore and John Latouche. The opera relates the story of famous historical figures caught up in Colorado’s tumultuous 19th century silver boom, and subsequent bust. It includes all the classic elements of a rousing story — a love triangle, magnetic characters who experience incredible reversals of fortune and a heart-wrenching conclusion.
Canadian coloratura soprano Tracy Dahl, who is well known and loved by Calgary opera-goers, will sing the title role. “It’s intriguing to play someone who actually lived and breathed,” she says. “As much as possible, we are constructing [the characters] based on history. We know Baby Doe was very radiant. Her big calling cards were her beauty and her charm. “
As the opera begins, Baby Doe has been abandoned by her husband, and uses her charms to escape poverty by meeting and seducing silver magnate Horace Tabor. Horace soon leaves his staid and frugal wife, Augusta, to marry Baby Doe. While his enormous fortune and legendary generosity ensure him a continued place in society, Baby Doe is not so lucky and is shunned. As Dahl says, “at that time a divorced woman was soiled and used.” It is likely that Horace’s marriage to Baby Doe thwarted his political aspirations.
The price of silver plummeted during the 1890s. As a result, Horace loses his vast fortune. He refuses to diversify, remaining faithful to the source of his riches. As he is dying, he asks Baby Doe to hold true to their dream by keeping their mine, and she promises to do so.
Dahl says that for the remainder of her life, Baby Doe was a “bag lady who wrapped her feet in burlap. People thought she was crazy — she stayed in a shack attached to the mine, in poverty, constantly proclaiming that it would produce silver again.” She was found frozen to death, 36 years later, having kept her promise to the bitter end.
The story of The Ballad of Baby Doe will resonate with Calgarians in a number of ways. The notion of people’s destinies being determined by a wildly fluctuating resource-based economy will sound familiar, as will the frustration of suffering interference from a distant national capital. The entrepreneurial spirit of Baby Doe and Horace would not be out of place in our own oilpatch, and the mountainous Wild West location of Leadville, Colorado is very similar to our own section of the Rockies.
The setting of the opera informs the music as well. Like the music of Aaron Copland, Moore’s score is unmistakably American and shows the influence of ragtime, jazz and folk music. “A folk opera is a really good way to describe it,” says Dahl. “It’s set in the Wild West, so there is honky tonk piano, and the colours of the orchestra are going to be different than what you’d usually hear [in an opera].” What The Ballad of Baby Doe’s music has in common with traditional operatic masterpieces is its wealth of melodic invention. “It’s a singer’s opera,” Dahl says. “My gosh, we all get to sing such beautiful music.”
Last heard here in November’s production of Rigoletto, Dahl is pleased to have the opportunity to sing for Calgary audiences again, and to portray such a strong and vital character. “I really do think it’s a gift to be able to do this role, and to do it with these people. Calgary should be very proud of their opera company, the growth it has had and the journey it has been on. I think there is great potential here that is already being mined, if you will.”
