Moore's The Ballad of Baby Doe (Opera Journeys Mini Guide Series) [1 ed.] 9781433708039

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The Ballad of Baby Doe

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The Ballad of Baby Doe Opera in two acts

Music by Douglas S. Moore

Libretto by John Latouche

Premiere: Central City, Colorado, July 7, 1956

Adapted from the Opera Journeys Lecture Series by Burton D. Fisher

Principal Characters Brief Story Synopsis Story Narrative with Music Highlights Commentary and Analysis

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Opera Journeys™ Mini Guide Series Published © Copywritten by Opera Journeys www.operajourneys.com

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Principal Characters in the Opera Mrs. Elizabeth Baby Doe, a miner’s wife Soprano Horace Tabor, mayor of Leadville Baritone Augusta Tabor, Horace’s wife Mezzo-soprano Mama McCourt, Baby Doe’s mother Contralto William Jennings Bryan, candidate for President Bass-baritone Chester A. Arthur, President of the U.S. Tenor Father Chapelle, priest at the wedding Tenor Samantha, Tabor’s maid Soprano Cronies and associates of Tabor, miners and their wives, saloon girls and dance hall entertainers, friends, hotel guests, politicians, foreign diplomats, and wedding guests, stage doorman, bouncer, bellboy. TIME: 1880 to 1899 PLACE: Leadville and Denver, Colorado, Washington, D.C. and southern California.

Brief Story Synopsis The Ballad of Baby Doe chronicles with penetrating historical fidelity the rise and fall of the Silver Baron, Horace A. W. Tabor. The story takes place between the years 1880 and 1899 in the cities of Leadville and Denver, Colorado, Washington, D.C. and in southern California. When the story unfolds, Horace Tabor is 50 years old, a man possessing astonishing wealth from his profitable silver mines, political power, and an exuberance for an extravagant lifestyle. However, dark omens loom on his horizon: Horace’s marriage to Augusta has become loveless; he is offended by her interference in his business affairs; and legislation is pending in Washington to adopt the gold standard, a drastic national policy change that would plummet the silver market, and consequently, signal the end of Tabor’s wealth. “Lizzie” Baby Doe McCourt accidentally enters Horace’s life: she is a beautiful 26 year-old woman recently estranged from her husband. Horace and Baby Doe fall in love, and although their extramarital affair has become scandalous, they flaunt society: Horace divorces Augusta, and then marries Baby Doe.

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Washington’s legislative tyranny humbles the Tabors; the new gold standard punishes them with a reversal of their fortunes: financially, they are ruined. Nevertheless, Horace’s dream for the return of silver never diminishes: just before his death in 1899, poor and defeated, he reaffirms his obsessive faith in his formerly bountiful Matchless Mine, and makes Baby Doe vow never to sell it. In 1935, 36 years after Horace Tabor’s death, Baby Doe Tabor was found frozen to death at the longabandoned Matchless Mine: its lone occupant. Story Narrative with Music Highlight Examples Act I – Scene 1: The year 1880. Outside the Tabor Opera House in Leadville, Colorado. On one side a saloon, on the other, the entrance to a hotel. After a pistol shot is heard from inside the saloon, a bouncer, followed by saloon girls, throws a drunken old miner, Jake Sands, onto the street. He rowdily boasts that he is celebrating because the wealthy and powerful Horace Tabor wants to pay him a large sum for his Matchless Mine, the mine with “Silver oozing from the soil!” Horace Tabor emerges from the opera house followed by four of his raucous cronies, all annoyed, bored, and indifferent to the gala concert featuring the coloratura soprano, Adelina Patti. Horace built the opera house to satisfy his wife Augusta’s demand for culture in Leadville: with unabashed pride, he compliments himself for the new opera house, a “fittin’ place for art and culture.” Tabor is a tough, robust, and uninhibited man in his 50 s: he owns just about everything in Leadville, and his wealth has also brought him political power; he is the mayor of Leadville, and lieutenant governor of Colorado. Girls emerge from the saloon to join Horace and his cronies: they all dance and sing as Horace boasts about his exploits and achievements; his reward for toil and hard work from the time “I came this way from Massachusetts.” “I came this way from Massachusetts….”

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At intermission, Augusta and the wives of Horace’s four cronies stand aghast at the scene of their husband’s indignities: dancing in the street with saloon girls. Augusta, a stern and austere woman, upbraids Horace for his impropriety and lack of respect, delivering a scathing lecture to him about proper behavior and refinement: she orders him to stop carousing and cavorting with tramps. Augusta’s power over Horace is only equal to his power over the town. The other men, equally under the thumbs of their wives, return to the concert. Tabor lingers behind. Baby Doe, newly arrived in Leadville fom Central City, approaches Tabor for directions to the Clarendon Hotel. Baby Doe’s entrance

Almost immediately, Horace becomes smitten by Baby Doe’s beauty: he graciously welcomes her to Leadville, points to the hotel, introduces himself, offers her his help, and as she departs, expresses his hope that they will meet again. Baby Doe replies confidently: “Indeed we’ll meet again.” Augusta appears at the doorway of the opera house to summon her husband back to the concert.

Act I – Scene 2: The same evening. Outside the Clarendon Hotel. Returning from the concert, the Tabors and friends appear enlivened and delighted by their musical evening: “Like as if the muses had’ve all descended.” Their friends leave, and Augusta enters the Clarendon Hotel where the Tabors reside. Horace decides to remain awhile outside, sits down on the steps in the shadows, and puffs a cigar. Two of the saloon girls pass by and Horace overhears their conversation: they gossip and accuse the pretty young lady who has just arrived in Leadville as pretentious and vain, also revealing that she is the wife of Harvey Doe of Central City. Tabor looks toward an open second-floor window and sees Baby Doe sitting at the piano, accompanying herself to a sentimental ballad whose words metaphorically speak about the yearning for love’s return.

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Baby Doe’s Willow Song

From the darkness, after Baby Doe finishes her song, Horace applauds. With curiosity, Baby Doe comes to the window and sees Horace below. They introduce themselves and then converse. Horace praises her beautiful singing, and then calls her name: “Baby Doe, the miners’ sweetheart.” In a flirtatious interplay, Baby Doe flatters Horace, telling him that she heard about his reputation, but never thought that he was so young: “Eyes afire with dreaming like a boy of seventeen.” Baby Does has enchanted Horace. Suddenly, his emotions and passions become inflamed: Horace tells her that he is conquered by his yearning and desire for her. “Warm as the autumn light, Soft as a pool at night,”

Horace and Baby Doe gaze at each other tenderly, and then he takes her hand and kisses it. A lamp suddenly illuminates from the window above. Augusta peers out and calls for Horace. He acknowledges that he is still outside, and obediently, yet reluctantly, responds to her wishes and goes toward the hotel to retire for the night.

Act I – Scene 3: Some weeks later. The Tabors’ large, ornate living room in the Clarendon Hotel. Augusta maintains a vigil at an open window, bewildered about Horace’s whereabouts. Samantha, an impassive, middle-aged maid, is busily dusting Horace’s messy desk. Looking on, Augusta becomes dismayed when she finds a check made out to Jake Sands. She immediately deduces that her reckless husband is imprudently buying the Matchless Mine. She places the

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check in her pocket, intending to discuss the matter with Horace at a later time. A pair of white lace gloves are discovered in a desk drawer. At first Augusta assumes that the gloves represent a gift for her, some extravagance for which she certainly would scold her spend-thrifty husband, but she is confused for lack of an occasion. A gift card falls to the floor, and Samantha passes it on to Augusta, who becomes revolted when she discovers that its sentimental verses are addressed to Baby Doe. In dismay, Augusta realizes that the awful rumors she has heard are true: Horace has betrayed her and is having an affair with Baby Doe. Augusta is humiliated. She speculates about Baby Doe’s youth and appearance, and then ruefully looks at her old hands, wrinkled from the bitter years of laborious cooking, scrubbing, mending, lifting rocks, digging in the fields, and tending children: “No, they’re not pretty hands. Not like hers! Not like hers!” Horace arrives and goes straight to his writing desk and starts rummaging among the papers. Augusta angrily confronts him and accuses him of recklessness in planning to buy yet another silver mine. He defends himself vigorously, explaining that what she perceives as recklessness is none other than his business astuteness: he reminds her that their success has depended on his readiness to seize opportunities, not on Augusta’s thriftiness. Augusta confronts Horace with the gloves, evidence of his unfaithfulness to her. Tabor is unrepentant and tactlessly defends his affair with Baby Doe, a woman who has finally provided him with love that he yearns for: her youth, warmth, and tenderness have become a welcome antidote to Augusta’s middle-aged harshness and severity. Horace’s humiliation of Augusta drives her into a rage. Seething with vengeful fury, she puts on her hat and shawl and goes off to confront Baby Doe, determined to banish her from Leadville.

Act I – Scene 4: The lobby of the Clarendon Hotel. Baby Doe descends the stairs: she carries a hatbox and adjusts a boa while a bell-boy follows her with luggage. She announces to the disappointed clerk that she has decided to leave Leadville and visit her family in

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Oshkosh. She requests a stamp, sits down at the desk, and proceeds to write a letter to her mother. Baby Doe’s letter brings her mother up-to-date on her problems: she reveals that her marriage to Harvey Doe has ended because he abandoned her, and that she has temporarily moved to Leadville where she has found a rich and powerful man who truly loves her; nevertheless, because he is married, the situation is untenable, and she must abandon the relationship and leave Leadville. “Dearest Mama, I am writing, For I’m lonely and distressed.”

Baby Doe sighs as she reads over the letter, and then she signs it: “Your loving daughter Lizzie.” Augusta appears at the head of the stairs, sees Baby Doe at the writing desk, and approaches her with steadfast determination: she immediately confronts Baby Doe and demands that she give up her illicit relationship with Horace. Much to Augusta’s surprise, Baby Doe confirms that she realized that their relationship was futile, and consequently, she is leaving Horace and Leadville. Nevertheless, she admonishes Augusta, unhesitatingly praising Horace as a fine, kind, and unusual man: “He must be free to follow his destiny, for he is above all conventional ways.” Unwisely and tactlessly, Augusta corrects Baby Doe’s perception of Horace: with contempt, she ridicules him and condemns him as a weak man, arrogantly proclaiming that Horace owes his success to her, an ingenious, strong, managing-type of woman who guided and looked after him. The two women exchange polite good-byes, Augusta confident that she has achieved victory. Baby Doe now expresses humiliation, becoming angry and shocked at Augusta’s contemptuous disrespect for Horace: to Baby Doe, Horace Tabor is a great man who deserves understanding, respect, and compassionate treatment from a woman. Baby Doe, distraught and unnerved by Augusta, tears up her letter. Horace arrives, notices that she is preparing to leave, and they embrace.

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Duet: Horace and Baby Doe: “You’re not going, my heart,”

Baby Doe affirms her love for Horace, promising that she will never leave him. Likewise, Horace assures her that their love will transcend those small-minded hypocrites who feed on scandal: “Only two people in love, two people in love.” Together, they climb the stairs.

Act I – Scene 5: The parlor in Augusta’s house in Denver. Augusta has moved to Denver because Horace abandoned her to live with Baby Doe. Augusta’s friends try to persuade her to expose his infidelity to the newspapers in order to create a scandal and frustrate his political ambitions. But Augusta refuses, determined to do nothing and maintain a dignified silence. However, Augusta becomes inflamed when she learns that Horace has influenced a judge and is secretly planning to divorce her. Furious at her humiliation, and the shame and indignity Horace has brought upon her, she swears vengeance.

Act I – Scene 6: A large reception hall at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., 1883. Augusta was futile in her efforts to prevent the divorce, and was unable to interfere in Horace’s plans to marry Baby Doe. Baby Doe and Horace, both now divorced from their respective spouses, married in a private ceremony in St. Louis. To fill a vacancy, Horace was appointed a U.S. Senator and has become a stalwart of the Republican party. He is about to make his marriage to Baby Doe respectable: they are about to be re-wed in a formal Catholic ceremony at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. Mrs. McCourt, Baby Doe’s mother, busily rushes around the room arranging flowers while guests discuss discriminating foreign protective trade barriers, and others gossip about the fact that some Senators’ wives have boycotted the wedding of the scandalous Tabors.

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Senator and Mrs. Horace Tabor are announced. Horace, in an expansive mood, drinks with his guests, their conversation immediately addressing the possibility that silver will be doomed when the country adopts the gold standard. Horace dismisses their fears as nonsense; Baby Doe intervenes with a lecture praising silver: “But silver, silver lies hidden in the core of dreams.” “Gold is a fine thing for those who admire it. Gold is like the sun.”

Horace claps his hands, and a servant steps forward with a velvet case containing a present for his bride: a magnificently jeweled necklace supposedly pawned by Queen Isabella to finance Columbus’s voyage. “For my beloved bride,”

Mama McCourt, sitting with the priest, indiscreetly mentions that she wishes Harvey Doe was present to witness Baby Doe’s new-found happiness: the priest, unaware that both Baby Doe and Horace are divorcees from previous marriages, becomes stunned and appalled. He storms from the room while shocked wives urge their husbands to leave as they shout “Scandal, Scandal, Divorce…” Just as the wedding party is about to break up in disaster, President Chester A. Arthur is announced. He kisses Baby Doe’s hand, and together with the remaining guests, toasts to the health of the beautiful bride and groom: “The silver king and his queen.”

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Act II – Scene 1: Denver. 1893. A balcony off the Ballroom of the Windsor Hotel. Baby Doe and Horace Tabor have been unwelcome and snubbed by “polite” society, but their money and power have earned them reluctant acceptance. As the Governor of Colorado hosts a ball in honor of the Tabors, old friends of Augusta lament her grief and angrily condemn Baby Doe’s indecent character and pretensions: nevertheless, their husbands prudently warn them of their political incorrectness. Baby Doe and Mama McCourt come out on the balcony to escape the tensions of the party. Baby Doe explains that she is heedless to the ladies’ sneering and cold reception, explaining that their snobbishness evolves from their envy: they are jealous of her happiness and love with Horace. “Those stuck up old things, I’d like to slap their faces.”

Quite unexpectedly, Augusta is announced: Baby Doe is apprehensive and sends Mama McCourt to find Horace. However, Augusta has come in friendship. She compliments Baby Doe, telling her that she admires her unusual ability to give love wholeheartedly and without question, something she herself had never been able to do. Augusta has come to warn Baby Doe that Horace’s wealth faces imminent doom: she has learned that tomorrow the President will sign legislation making gold the monetary standard; the silver market will crash, and as a result, Horace will soon run out of money, because he is overextended, has too many mortgages, and never ceases to indulge in extravagances. While Augusta urges Baby Doe to save Horace from his folly and persuade him to sell the Matchless Mine before it is too late, Horace suddenly appears. Angrily, he rebukes Augusta for interfering in his life, but Baby Doe defends her, assuring him that she has mellowed and come in kindness. Unable to moderate Horace’s obstinacy and agitation, Augusta leaves in frustration. Nevertheless, Augusta succeeded in arousing Baby Doe’s anxiety: she questions Horace about the future of silver, but he assures her that silver will rebound: “Silver

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will rise. And we will rise with it.” Baby Doe vows her full faith in Horace and the future of silver: she removes her necklace and jewels and tells Horace to “place my bet on silver along with yours.” Horace makes Baby Doe vow that no matter what happens to him, she will always keep the Matchless Mine: “Always, I promise, always.”

Act II – Scene 2: A Club Room in Denver. It is 1895, two years later. The silver market has tumbled in anticipation of its replacement by gold as the country’s monetary standard. Horace Tabor is now in serious financial trouble: to foster his own interests, he has broken with the Republican Party and has championed William Jennings Bryan, the Democratic Party nominee who advocates a “free silver” platform. While four cronies play poker, they deride Horace’s ambitions to be elected governor of Colorado, and chide him for his continued obstinacy in supporting silver. Horace arrives, is cordially greeted, and joins the poker game. He invites his cronies to combine forces with him and invest in his failing Matchless Mine: he tells them that to keep it afloat, he has invested all of his assets: his shipping company, hotels, mercantile stores, and railway stock. The cronies react stonily and refuse his offer. Horace invokes the virtues of William Jennings Bryan, the great prophet of silver who is running for the presidency, arguing that Bryan can defeat McKinley. The cronies refute him for betraying the Republican Party and leave indignantly. Horace concludes that his friends have betrayed him: with bravado and desperation, he vigorously condemns them as cowards. “Turn tail and run then,”

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Act II – Scene 3: The year 1896. A pro-Bryan political rally outside the Matchless Mine. A crowd of miners, their wives, and children have gathered to welcome and proclaim William Jennings Bryan “A champion of the people.” Baby Doe, her mother, and the two young Tabor girls arrive, the elder of whom prattles about her daddy being an even greater man than Bryan. Tabor arrives at the head of the rallying politicans, moves to the platform, and exhorts the crowd to vote for Bryan, the man who “won’t nail us to a cross of gold!” adding that “…a vote for Mister Bryan is a vote for liberty!” “You miners, doctors and you cowpokes,”

Accompanied by tumultuous cheers, Bryan is introduced by the Mayor. He addresses the enthusiastic crowd, inflaming them with religious and moralistic exhortations: “Ours is a cause as holy as the cause of liberty itself,” and “Never, never shall we bow down in worship before the calf of gold!” “Awake! Awake! Drive the money lenders from the temples of our land,”

In the midst of his speech, the younger Tabor daughter approaches him and presents him with a bunch of roses. He takes her in his arms and anoints her as the symbol of their cause: “Child, I christen thee Silver Dollar.” At the end of Bryan’s speech, the crowd forms a procession. Some of the men raise Bryan on their shoulders as all cheer wildly: “Bryan. To glory and victory with Bryan.”

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Act II – Scene 4: A few weeks later. Augusta’s study in her home in California. Augusta stands before a window, looking out: she is visibly shaken by the headlines shouted by newsboys: McKinley defeated Bryan in a landslide. Mama McCourt visits her and announces that Bryan was Horace’s last hope: he is now ruined and penniless; she pleads for Augusta’s financial help for the now impoverished Tabors. Gently and firmly, Augusta rebuffs Mama McCourt, knowing that Horace’s vain pride prevents him from accepting her money. Mama McCourt explains that Horace’s financial ruin has punished and humbled him, but if he came to Augusta for help, Baby Doe would lose respect for him. August refuses Mama McCourt, quoting Horace’s last statement to her: “I want nothing from her. Kindness least of all. She has none to give.” Mama McCourt leaves in frustration, muttering that she was foolish to have come to Augusta for help. Sadly, Augusta reminisces about Horace and recalls the past: her memories turn to the love she once bore for him, the joys, as well as those years of bitterness, pain, anguish, and emptiness. She knows well in her heart that at this moment, Horace Tabor needs the tenacious Augusta, but she is afraid, must turn away, and cannot go to him. “Augusta! Augusta! How can you turn away?”

Act II – Scene 5: The year 1899. The stage of the Tabor Grand Theater in Leadville. Horace Tabor mounts the stage of the Tabor Theater: he is poorly dressed in working clothes, and followed by a bewildered stage doorman who allowed him to enter after he identified himself as H. A. W. Tabor. Tabor stands on the stage and begins to hallucinate and see apparitions: he recalls the entire history of his life, all the episodes in his rise and fall. The stage doorman watches with incredulity, thinking he is mad and ill, and goes of to fetch assistance.

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Horace envisions a spotlight striking the figure of a pompous politician, who announces that in appreciation to their benefactor, the citizens of Denver present him with a gold watch. Horace cries out with anger, offended because the watch should have been silver. He hears the shrill voice of Augusta calling him: she appears to him as a black hooded figure. Horace believes she is his mother. She angrily slaps him in the face, reproaching him for fighting and stealing in school. She accuses him of being worthless like his ever-dreaming father: he should be more like Lem, his hard working, god- fearing brother. Horace tries to embrace her, and then she suddenly throws back her bonnet and turns, reappearing as a vision of the young and gay Augusta Pierce. They relive their courtship, how they met, and Horace’s dreams and hopes for their future. Augusta’s four friends appear and condemn him for fulfilling his ambitions by marrying the boss’s daughter. The politician recounts the Tabors’ laborious trek westward in search of fame and glory. Augusta makes him sign a pledge not to squander money while he and his four cronies praise the opportunities for mining in Colorado. The saloon girls begin to dance with the cronies; Horace joins them, and begins to swig from a bottle of whiskey; Augusta reproaches him for breaking his promise to refrain from drinking. Horace recalls the years when they were merchants for the miners: he became bored and decided to panhandle for gold. And then they bought the Little Pittsburgh mine, and they earned millions from one mining triumph after another: they bought all of Leadville: the hotel, saloon, bank, and “the whole dam town!” and the final monument to his achievements, the Opera House. Augusta tells Horace that he will die a failure. Horace refutes her: Baby Doe will be his ultimate achievement, his great legacy, and glory: the remembrance of true love. His two daughters appear, and then only Silver Dollar: she is a prostitute, drunk, half naked, in garish clothes, and singing a vulgar ragtime tune to two customers. In desperation, Horace cries out, “Ain’t there something, someone, somewhere, sometime that somehow I can hold on to?” Horace Tabor’s life has flashed before him: he has seen his past and the future; his legacy for all of his life’s work has become nothing. All the hallucinatory figures disappear and Baby Doe arrives, led on the stage by the doorman. Baby Doe

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has come to take the battered Horace home. As Horace dies in her arms, she assures him of her eternal love: “Love alone is fixed in time.” “Always through the changing of sun and shadow, time and space,”

Baby Doe pulls back her hood, revealing her white hair: she has transformed into an old woman. A light illuminates the Matchless Mine, as Baby Doe reaffirms her eternal love for Horace Tabor. “Never shall the mourning dove weep for us in accents wild. I shall walk beside my love who is husband, father, child. As our earthly eyes grow dim still the old song will be sung. I shall change along with him so that both are ever young. Ever young__________” Death did not separate Baby Doe from Horace Tabor: their love was sealed with living vows. Horace Tabor’s greatest accomplishment in his lifetime became Baby Doe’s love for him: his enduring legacy.

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Commentary and Analysis

D

ouglas Moore, 1893-1969, born in Cutchogue, Long Island,New York, became one of the most prominent American composers of the 20th century. The leitmotif weaving through all of his stage works was the American experience, and by implication, the tension inherent in defining the essence of being American. His artistic resource was Americana, his music and texts faithfully capturing and portraying the heart and soul of the American character and culture; his works contained archetypal themes that were inspired by American history, the folk, rural, and pioneer life. Moore’s music education was exceptional and extensive. In particular, he graduated from Yale in 1917 after studying harmony with the renowned music educator, Horatio Parker. World War I intervened and he served as a naval lieutenant, afterwards resuming studies in Paris with the era’s most celebrated musical giants: Vincent d’Indy, Charles Tournemire, and Nadia Boulanger. In 1921, at the age of 28, he became Director of Music at the Cleveland Museum of Art while simultaneously studying with Ernest Bloch at the Cleveland Institute of Music. In 1926, Moore composed his first serious work, Four Museum Pieces, a musical illustration of four works of art in the Cleveland Art Museum’s collection that won for him a Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship. Subsequently, he was invited to join the music faculty of Columbia University, where he progressed to become a significant and inspirational figure in American musical education, eventually becoming chairman of the music department at Barnard, a post he occupied from 1940 through 1962. Moore was an author of books on music, an organist, conductor, and teacher, but his most prominent creative legacy remains his many operas, songs, and much instrumental, orchestral, and program music. His most successful stage work, the folk opera, The Ballad of Baby Doe (1956), has become mythologized as an integral part of the American national consciousness. Baby Doe, together with Carlisle Floyd’s similarly folkinfluenced opera, Susannah (1954), are truly American music dramas; both have become indisputably integrated into American as well as international operatic repertories. Moore’s musical theater works include: Oh, Oh, Tennessee (1925); Jesse James (1928); White Wings

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(1935); The Headless Horseman (1936), an operetta after the poet Stephen Vincent Benet’s adaptation of a Washington Irving story that was created for schoolchildren; the folk opera The Devil and Daniel Webster (1938), also with its libretto by Stephen Vincent Benet; the fairy tale opera The Emperor’s New Clothes (1949); Giants in the Earth (1951) which won a Pulitzer Prize; the children’s operetta Puss in Boots (1950); Gallantry (1958); The Wings of the Dove (1961); The Greenfield Christmas Tree (1962); and his final opera about the prohibitionist, Carry Nation (1966). Many of Moore’s stage works have been categorized as musicals or operettas because their thematic substance are light in character, often satirical in theme, and contain much spoken dialogue. In that context, Moore shares his musical theater reputation and destiny with Jacques Offenbach, the 19 th century composer of hundreds of satirical opera bouffes or operettes, all of which failed to earn him a place in the archives of serious music drama until he composed his final opera, The Tales of Hoffmann (1881). The Ballad of Baby Doe became unquestionably Moore’s most serious music drama, a magnum opus that finally earned him the venerable accolade “opera composer.” Ironically, the success of Baby Doe obscures his many instrumental works, all of which were initially enthusiastically received but are now seldom performed. Nevertheless, his Baby Doe has been acclaimed a great American opera, receiving at least five separate professional productions in the United States during the 1976 bicentennial year, and remaining a venerable staple in the repertory of many American opera companies.

P

rior to the 20th century, American opera was largely imitativeof,and modeled after European genres: Italian, French, and German. But after World War II, American opera began to resonate and develop its own character, personality, and individuality. Many American composers, contemporaries of Moore, successfully contributed to American opera’s evolution and development. Gian Carlo Menotti (1911- ), one of the most prolific contemporary composers, has written operas with immense theatrical flair and considerable popular appeal, all with a variety of readily accessible musical styles, although his operas are not generally involved with American themes: of his more popular works are The Medium (1946), The Consul (1950), Amahl and

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the Night Visitors, (composed for television in 1951), and The Saint of Bleecker Street (1954). Samuel Barber, (1910-1981), composed in a late romantic style, receiving the Pulitzer Prize for Vanessa in 1958. In 1966, he composed Antony and Cleopatra, its libretto based on Shakespeare, which was commissioned to inaugurate the new Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center in New York. Virgil Thomson (1896-1989), composed Four Saints in Three Acts (1934), with text by Gertrude Stein, and The Mother of Us All (1947), an inventive deification of Susan B. Anthony’s crusade for women’s enfranchisement. Like Moore, Thomson’s works incorporated American and folk-based settings, sometimes satiric, yet always saturated with tuneful and emotionally moving music. George Gershwin’s operatic fame rests on his masterpiece, Porgy and Bess (1935), libretto by DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin. Its underlying story, from the point of view of a folk-based work, has been contentious and controversial; nevertheless, its captivating music, composed in AfricanAmerican styles, remains ever-popular, and new productions of the opera continue to appear each year. The most frequently performed American operas written in the 20th century are Moore’s “American Western,” The Ballad of Baby Doe, and Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah, a melodramatic folk opera about intolerance in the deep South. Both operas are truly American, establishing their realistic local color and ambience through music that captures American musical idioms: traditional square dance melodies, folk-type songs, and hymns.

M

oore’s musical style is comparatively simple and accessible,neither complex nor cerebral, but always conveying a sense of intimacy, familiarity, and an uncanny allusion to its indigenous authenticity. In Baby Doe’s music, he truly captures an Americana essence, not by quoting existing folk tunes, although there is one single fleeting reference to Clementine, but through the skillful creation of “authentic” imitations of the musical idiom of the period: the score contains sentimental parlor ballads and waltzes, whirling reel-style dances, and even political campaign songs. Its venues are real and not contrived: the Willard Hotel existed in Washington, D.C. in the 1880s, and the Tabor Opera House, built in 1879, still stands in Leadville, Colorado. Moore’s inspired music, together with librettist John

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Latouche’s crafted verse, provide Baby Doe with a truly American ambience: there are whole scenes that evolve and are woven in cleverly captured musical cliches and rhythms, endowing the entire work with a seemingly grass-roots, home-grown sensibility; William Jennings Bryan’s Cross of Gold speech, an historical reality, is a theatrical coup in which politics is blended into the opera, creating one of its most supremely dramatic moments. Above all, Moore was a composer of melody: a musical inventor whose roots rested firmly in traditional tonality and easily accessible harmonies. Throughout his career, he composed only diatonic music, resisting some of his contemporarys appetites to experiment with modernist trends. Much 20th century music experimented with Arnold Shoenberg’s “serial” music; harmonic adventures into Expressionism and atonal music that avoided tonal centers or key relationships. Serialism overtook the mainstream music establishment of academic scholars, all of whom were firmly ensconced on the faculties of the most prestigious American schools of music: nevertheless, Moore’s music remained within tonal traditions. Ironically, with the advent of the 1980s, those “new” musical ideas of the 20th century, serialism and its successor, minimalism, had virtually reached their demise in the concert halls: a new generation of American composers emerged: modernists who returned to tonalism and reaffirmed classical musical traditions. The new composers of the last 20 years, like Douglas Moore and Carlisle Floyd who preceded them, speak a tonal musical language without inhibition or selfconsciousness: they are not paralyzed by tradition, composing richly melodic and highly serious music that is intelligible for the common listener, and in conventional musical forms such as symphonies, chamber music, operas, and ballets. As the 21st century unfolds, serialism, minimalism, and various other avantgarde movements, have become bankrupt and generally, have made their farewells: classical traditions, rich lyricism, and melody in tonal forms have returned to recapture their former glory. Musical history, like all history, is written by the victors. Douglas Moore, Carlisle Floyd, George Gershwin, and Leonard Bernstein, were American champions of tonality: Bernstein in particular, was a relentless and zealous crusader for tonality in music through the latter part of the 20th century, convincingly arguing that the

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musical language requires gravity and resolution. Eventually, the tonalists remained undaunted and became the victors in the musical history wars. Moore religiously maintained his melodic traditions, harmonies, and compositional roots in tonal music, specifically composing music in the American folk idiom: in Baby Doe there is an abundance of folksongs and folk-style music that capture the specific Western idiom. Just like Puccini in Madama Butterfly, Girl of the Golden West, and Turandot, Moore was a skilled craftsman in capturing local idioms and creating ambience through his music. Baby Doe, a magnificent blend of romance and frontier rowdiness, became Moore’s inspiration to demonstrate his exceptional ability to compose tuneful songs that evoked Americana. The opera resonates with the ambience of the turn-of-the century West, not only through visual scenery and costumes, but through musical exploitation: waltz cadences underscore many of its sentimental moments, and there are many original folkdances with appropriate rhythmic accompaniment. But Moore also provides an abundance of exquisite diatonic melody with music that is far from dissonant or discordant. In its architectural structure, Baby Doe is an opera in the classical style, a music drama composed with traditional recitative-driven action sequences that separate set-piece songs and choral numbers. The heroine, Baby Doe, has five exceptionally beautiful arias, among which are her Willow Song, the Letter Aria, Gold is a fine thing, Those stuck up old things, and her final aria, Always through the changing of sun and shadow. The characters are portrayed brilliantly through their music. Horace Tabor is brought memorably to life in his arias, each of which is endowed with a variety of musical styles depending on whether he is with his cronies, the dour and puritanical Augusta, or the adoring Baby Doe. Horace’s abandoned wife, Augusta, pours out her emotions in her Act III soliloquy, a highlight of the opera that represents an overwhelmingly poignant moment of human despair: Augusta! Augusta! Likewise, the dialogue scenes possess realism through the characters’ indigenous sound inflections, as well as their underlying music: the gossiping women, the men playing poker, the nagging wives, and the serious discussions of economics and politics at the Washington wedding. The final scene, Act II, Scene 5, is an ingenious,

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masterful invention of musico-dramatic theater: there is a flashback, and a flash-forward as Horace Tabor recalls the triumphs and failures in his life. Tabor appears as a broken man, defeated and humbled by destiny, and haunted about his legacy. He stumbles onto the darkened stage of his Tabor Grand in a delirious state of despair: he relives his past and foresees the future; his “terrible” mother, courting Augusta, Augusta’s austerity, and his daughter, Silver Dollar, becoming a prostitute. Baby Doe arrives to comfort him in his dying moments. Before he dies, they vow eternal love. Baby Doe then approaches a shadowy image of the Matchless Mine where she will take up her lonely vigil. She has transformed into an old woman: her final words, “I shall change along with him so that both are ever young. Ever young,” a poignant farewell that resonates with love, sacrifice, and martyrdom, appropriately anointed the Leadville Liebestod, and a confirmation of Baby Doe’s enduring love for Horace Tabor: his longed-for legacy. .

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he Ballad of Baby Doe’s chronicle of the rise and fall of the “Silver Baron,” Horace Tabor, is a story inherently endowed with almost mythic proportions: it is an epic that captures and underscores that special American ethos; a passionate, self-proclaimed, “rugged individualism.” Alexis de Tocqueville, the French political and social commentator, visited America in the 19 th century and called Americans “rugged individualists,” a term intended to describe a unique form of comparatively unrestrained self-indulgence and individualism, a strong bond to family and friends, and an almost solemn veneration of individual freedom: de Tocqueville’s “rugged individualism” defined the character, soul, and pioneering spirit of the American West during the 19th century. In its broadest sense, rugged individualism incorporated an entire value system and beliefs that exalted progress: political, economic, social, and religious. Principally, man was at the center of all its values: individuals were considered morally equal, but that equality could not be exploited for the well-being of others; its underlying values stressed individual freedom, self-reliance, privacy, respect for other individuals, limited government interference in human lives, and above all, a duty to maintain law and order and avoid anarchy.

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De Tocqueville’s description of “rugged individualism” provides the compass of values for the Baby Doe story’s historical background: all the drama’s characters are quintessential, almost archetypal examples of the “rugged individualist” spirit of those 19th century pioneers in the American West: “rugged individualism” is the soul of the Baby Doe story.

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he story is energized by Colorado’s mining industry that flourished during the second half of the 19th century. In 1803, immediately after the purchase of the Louisiana territory, the American government dispatched surveyors to map, explore, and record scientific data about the Colorado Territory: Zebulon Pike in 1806, Stephen Long in 1820, and John C. Frémont in 1842. In 1859 gold was discovered in Colorado, and in the rush for sudden wealth, the cry became “Pikes Peak or bust.” Mining history was unfolding in the territory of Colorado, first from gold panned from the streambeds, and then from mountain lodes, but of the thousands of seekers and dreamers for gold and instant wealth, only a few found their bonanza. In 1876, the territory of Colorado became a member of the Union. The official government monetary standard severely affected the destiny of the metal miners. An Act of Congress, contentiously called by its opponents the “Crime of ’73,” placed America under a silver monetary standard: silver became the backing for American currency, and paper money could be converted into silver without restriction; silver became America’s legal settlement for international obligations. In the 1870s, as most foreign countries adopted the gold standard, the U.S. Treasury stopped coining silver. A sharp recession unfolded, and the Free Silver Movement was reborn: the Bland-Allison Act of 1878 restored the silver dollar as legal tender, and later, the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890 required the U.S. Treasury to purchase silver for coinage into dollars. The battle between silver and gold had also become a metaphor for class struggles. Silver became the symbol of the poor in their struggle against the rich, as well as the symbol of the underprivileged fighting against special interests. For the disadvantaged, “free” silver represented economic justice. The advocates of a silver standard became owners of silver mines in the West, farmers who believed that an expanded currency would increase the price of their crops, and debtors who hoped that its

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abundance would enable them to pay their debts more easily. In 1896, William Jennings Bryan (1860 – 1925), became the Populist and Democratic party candidate for president: he advocated a platform of free and unlimited coinage of silver, an “easy money” policy intended to rescue a depressed economy after the Panic of 1893 by legislating the unlimited coinage of silver to gold at a ratio of 16 to 1. Bryan was defeated in the 1896 election by the incumbent Republican President, Grover Cleveland. Bryan ran for president unsuccessfully in 1896, 1900, and 1908. His enemies regarded him as an ambitious demagogue, but his supporters viewed him as a champion of liberal causes: throughout his career, his Midwestern roots clearly identified him with agrarian interests, and an opponent of the “hard money” policy of Eastern bankers and industrialists who favored the gold standard. A climax of Bryan’s career undoubtedly was the 1896 presidential campaign in which he won the Democratic nomination at the Chicago convention with his electrifying speech, the “Cross of Gold.” He delivered an eloquent and memorable attack on gold that has often been quoted: “You shall not press down on the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind on a cross of gold.” Four years later, in 1900, a Republican majority in Congress enacted the Gold Standard Act which made gold the legal standard and backing for American currency. Moore’s Baby Doe brilliantly captures the real history and politics of the era: Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech is cleverly woven into the opera story. Horace Tabor, a man who had achieved his phenomenal wealth from silver, supported Bryan: nevertheless, after Bryan’s defeat, America did indeed legislate the gold standard, the policy dooming Tabor and causing a reversal in his fortunes.

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n March 8, 1935, a headline in the New York Times appeared at the top of page 23 announcing the death of Baby Doe Tabor, an event that eventually attracted extensive national excitement and an obsessive public fascination. “WIDOW OF TABOR FREEZES IN SHACK. Famed Belle Dies Alone and Penniless, Guarding Old Leadville Bonanza Mine.”

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Elizabeth “Baby Doe” Tabor, had been found frozen to death near an abandoned mine where she had maintained a vigil since the death of her husband 36 years earlier: she had food but no fuel; she was too feeble to fetch wood; and she was discovered almost two weeks after her death by a neighbor.

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orace Tabor was born in 1830 in Holland, Vermont, but left home at 19 to work in the stone quarries in Vermont, Massachusetts and Maine. In 1855, at the age of 25, he joined the New England Immigrant Society whose purpose was to populate the Kansas Territory (now Colorado) with anti-slave settlers. He farmed, and was eventually elected to the territorial legislature, where he was instrumental in keeping the new territory from entering the Union as a slave state. In 1857, Tabor returned to Maine to marry Augusta Pierce, the daughter of the owner of a Vermont stone quarry where he had worked as a stonecutter. After their marriage, they made the six-week trek back to Kansas. In the Kansas territory, the Tabor’s exploited the gold fever that had erupted on the eastern slope of the Continental Divide. For the next 20 years, respected, well-liked and trusted, they became middle-class storekeepers, particularly in Leadville, a new town that sprang up amid the mining camps: they provided the miners with food and equipment, and even maintained the post office and bank. Augusta suffered emotionally in her new life in the West, becoming alienated from her middle-class eastern upbringing, as well as her chaste, puritan New England sensibilities. Nevertheless, she was dedicated and committed to working with her husband, as well as raising their only son, Maxcy. In 1878, Horace Tabor became a partner in the Little Pittsburgh silver mine by exchanging food and equipment for a one-third share. Little Pittsburgh’s success became the spark that ignited one of the world’s greatest, and perhaps shortest lived fortunes. Tabor eventually bought 16 other mines in and around Leadville, and ultimately, the bountiful Matchless Mine, one of the highest yielding mines in the West. The Tabor’s rocketed from rags-to-riches almost overnight. Although Horace became a spendthrift, Augusta maintained her conservative puritan values. She continued to take in boarders even after they accumulated massive wealth, rebuffed fancy clothes and jewelry, and repudiated “paint” on her face like other

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women. Nevertheless, the Tabors’ sudden, enormous, and outrageous wealth profoundly intensified their differences. Augusta persistently admonished Horace to save money and spend carefully, a seemingly cautious silliness to a man who realized he could never spend his money as fast as he was accumulating it. In 1880, when Horace turned 50, he became obsessed to live flamboyantly and relish his wealth lavishly and extravagantly: contrarily, Augusta preferred to remain practical, frugal, and ordinary. Sometime in 1879, Elizabeth “Lizzie” McCourt “Baby” Doe came into Horace Tabor’s life, a beautiful woman 26 years younger than Tabor. “Lizzie” McCourt was born in Wisconsin, a lively and independently spirited young woman who hid her tomboy disposition behind a cherubic guise. In 1877, at the age of 23, she had won a church figure skating contest and came to the attention of Harvey Doe, Jr. They married and moved to Central City, Colorado, where Harvey’s father gave his son an interest in a mine in the hope that his efforts would make it profitable. Nevertheless, hard work became an anathema to Harvey. Consequently, “Lizzie” worked in the mines with her male counterparts. Her childlike appearance, her golden hair, and her appealing disposition earned her the admiration and affection of the miners who endearingly anointed her with the nickname that became her legacy: “Baby Doe, the miner’s sweetheart.” At that time, Baby Doe attracted the attention of the newly wealthy Horace Tabor of Leadville, who caused her to leave Central City and her wayward husband. (In the opera story, they meet accidentally when she arrives in Leadville.) Horace then installed Baby Doe in Leadville’s leading hotel after becoming estranged from Augusta and transplanting her to Denver. Horace’s liaison with Baby Doe had become public knowledge and scandal. Nevertheless, he scorned society. He was so powerful that he engineered a divorce from Augusta without her knowledge: Augusta was presented with an uncontestable fait accompli while she was living in Denver. In 1882, Horace and Baby Doe secretly married in a private civil ceremony in St. Louis, five weeks after he was granted his divorce from Augusta, and just after the Colorado legislature elected him to serve the remaining month in the unexpired term of Sen. Henry Teller, newly appointed by President Arthur as Secretary of the Interior.

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Horace and Baby Doe married again in an opulent and scandalous - public ceremony in Washington, D.C., while he was serving his “thirty day” term in the U.S. Senate. Horace Tabor, 50 years old, now a politician with power as well as wealth beyond imagination, had secured Baby Doe as his trophy wife. The Catholic priest who presided at the wedding was unaware of their divorces, but when he later found out, he returned his $200 fee and refused to register the marriage in St. Matthew’s Parish. Tabor’s tenure in Washington was flamboyant as well as fleeting. His jewelry, boisterousness, and, at times, ingratiating back-slapping style, earned him the reputation as “The Wild West Senator”: he was also known as “Senator Nightshirt,” the sobriquet earned from a report that he wore diamond-studded nightgowns. The Tabors – Horace and Baby Doe – had two daughters, and lived lavishly and extravagantly, for the most part, indifferent to “polite” society who had shunned and scorned them. The 1890s witnessed profound economic and political turmoil and change: Horace Tabor was a rugged individualist, incapable of grasping the obscure and abstract concepts which were evolving and developing around him, but would have a severe impact on his future: global market economies, protective tariffs, the gold standard, and the end of government support for the price of silver that inevitably resulted in its devaluation. Tabor’s glory and fortune evaporated with the collapse of silver. Defeated and determined to survive, he returned to sweat and toil labor, hard-rock mining at the age of 66. Shortly thereafter, in 1899, he died, at the time, employed as Denver’s postmaster. Augusta had been in poor health and had earlier moved to the restorative climate of southern California where she died a wealthy woman in 1895 at the age of 62. Baby Doe spent the remaining 36 years of her life impoverished in a cabin outside the Matchless Mine in Leadville. After Horace’s death, she was still beautiful and relatively young, but rather than remarry, she chose to remain to her vow to Horace to “hold on to the Matchless,” continuously seeking funds to restore the mine to its illusive revival. Horace Tabor, on his deathbed, supposedly made Baby Doe promise to hold on to the mine, persuading her that it had potential yet to make millions. Often with the help of a firearm, Baby Doe kept her vigil, spending the remaining years

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of her life at the Matchless Mine with hopes, fantasies, and dreams for its revival: her legacy became scribbled pages from her memories filled with her paranoid and delirious imagination. Horace Tabor’s life was a true American epic, a charismatic and heroic story about human struggles on the American frontier: it is a story saturated with conflict and tension, larger-than-life exuberance, painful agony, and uncountable riches. His life and personality were synonymous with the complex pioneering spirit of the 19th century American west: he was brash, arrogant, prone to excess, gauche, naïve, and stoic, yet he was a man of intense human sensibilities; humble, honest, tender, and in terms of the leitmotif of the Baby Doe opera, yearning for genuine love. At one time or another in his career he was a banker, a mine owner, Mayor of Leadville, Colorado state legislator, Lt. Governor, acting Governor, briefly U.S. Senator, financier, land speculator, railroad owner, steamship owner, stagecoach and express line owner, lumber baron, newspaper publisher and postmaster. Tabor’s story evokes America’s mythic past: those 19th century pioneers who were seeking glory in the land of opportunity, and in their pursuits, faced hostility, danger, and unpredictable destinies.

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ouglas Moore became fascinated with the Baby Doe Tabor story when he read her obituary in 1935. The composer realized early in his career that his talents were served best in indigenous, American-theme subjects, and he knew immediately that he had found the quintessential American drama that he could set to music. Yet, Moore’s Baby Doe would incubate for two decades before finding full expression in his opera. In the 1950s, to celebrate the centennial of the discovery of gold in Colorado, the Central City Opera Association suggested the Baby Doe subject and solicited Moore to compose the opera. The opera received its commission from the Koussevitsky Foundation of the Library of Congress, and was designated to honor the bicentennial of Columbia University, as well as the memory of the noted conductor, Serge Koussevitsky, and his wife Natalie. As his librettist, Moore selected his long-time friend, John Treville Latouche, a man with a remarkable ear for the American idiom and vernacular, best known for his contributions to Cabin in the Sky and Bernstein’s Candide.

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The Ballad of Baby Doe premiered in Central City, Colorado, on July 7, 1956. Costumes, settings, and lighting were by Donald Oenslager: it was staged by Hanya Holm and Edward Levy; and it was under the musical direction of Emerson Buckley. The alternating principals were Walter Cassel and Clifford Harvuot (Horace Tabor), Martha Lipton and Frances Bible (Augusta), Dolores Wilson and Leyna Gabriele (Baby Doe), Beatrice Krebs (Mama McCourt), and Lawrence Davidson and Norman Triegle (William Jennings Bryan). Ironically, opera houses reverberate throughout the Baby Doe story. Horace Tabor built two opera houses: in 1879, the Tabor Opera House in Leadville (the opening scene of Moore’s opera), and the Tabor Grand in Denver, the latter, the venue for The Ballad of Baby Doe’s premiere some 80 years after it was built; the opera house was demolished in 1964, Shortly after its premiere, Moore made revisions and additions, the revised version produced by the New York City Opera in April 1958: it was staged by Vladimir Rosing, and conducted by Emerson Buckley. The principals were Walter Cassel (Horace Tabor), Martha Lipton (Augusta), Beverly Sills (Baby Doe), Beatrice Krebs (Mama McCourt), and Joshua Hecht (William Jennings Bryan). American audiences respond to Baby Doe instinctively. At the opera’s fortieth-anniversary year (1996), there was a revival at Central City which was recorded for Newport Classic: John Ostendorf, who produced the Central City recording, mused that Baby Doe “is such a part of us and our own history that it’s hard to resist, [and] Moore’s score — well, anyone who can resist it is positively un-American and should consider expatriating.”

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aby Doe captures the tough, driving frontier spirit of the 19th century American West. It is an heroic saga of epochal proportions, not about far off places and cultures, but rather a tale about recent American history that is indeed an integral part of the American collective unconscious. Building wealth is the real engine that drives the story, but one of its underlying themes is the forging of the American character. Tabor’s story is an inspirational rags-to-riches story that could have only happened in America: a man acquires unprecedented wealth while at the forefront of America’s continental expansion, and

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then is defeated, the victim of those same democratic forces – legislation - that nurtured him; it is an epic story about the American soul, how it is driven, how it chooses relationships, conquers frontiers, and makes mistakes. Opera, a theatrical presentation whose story is driven by the potency of words combined with the emotive power of music, became the perfect medium for Moore to convey the epic Baby Doe story; a chronicle saturated with archetypal conflicts and tensions which erupt into extravagantly charged dramatic situations. Its story possesses intensive romantic tension as its love rivalry unfolds, focusing on the impulses of the impetuous Colorado “Silver King,” the agony of his spurned puritanical wife Augusta, and the miner’s sweetheart, Baby Doe, the classic “other woman” who becomes its heroine: the story is saturated with passions of love, sacrifice, martyrdom, dreams of instant wealth, excess, and politics. Baby Doe is a true “ballad,” a self-contained narrative elevated through its opera format to the gravity of a saga. Its inspiration emanates from a rich repository of American history and legend, but becomes transcendent through its scope and geographical sweep. Its story is not fiction, but rather, a chronicle of the heroic lives of actual historical personages documented in a broad sweep of human history stretching from the Civil War to the Great Depression. Moore and Latouche followed the actual historical Tabors with great fidelity. The results became an endearing confection of true history combined with a deeply moving love story and love rivalry. Baby Doe is not a Hollywood-style Western story: its heroes and villains are not stereotypical images who die in melodramatic gunfights, but rather, they are rugged, pioneering Americans, deeply involved in conflict, tension, survival, and the search for meaning in a world of rapidly shifting values. It is a riches-to-rags story with powerful passions of romance, courage, fortitude, and sacrifice, whose transformation to the music drama stage has earned it its most deserving accolade: a “Great American Opera.”

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rom the moment of Baby Doe’s death in March 1935 when her frozen body was discovered on the floor of her cabin, her arms peacefully crossed on her chest, she and Horace Tabor became American legends. The story not only became the subject for Moore’s opera, but for countless books and articles: there was a

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1932 Hollywood movie, Silver Dollar, starring EdwardG. Robinson as Horace, and Bebe Daniels as Baby Doe, that premiered at the Tabor Grand Opera House in Denver; various shows adapting the story; a chain of “Baby Doe” restaurants featuring a silver mine motif; and a German stage play by Carl Zuckmayer, Das Leben des H.A.W.Tabor – the translation of The Matchless Mine, die Unerschopfliche, “the inexhaustible.” Words performed through music can express what language alone has exhausted. Douglas Moore, the narrator and dramatist of this sublime story, through the emotive power of his music, ingeniously created a music drama masterpiece, a work possessing exceptional beauty and unrivalled dramatic power. The Ballad of Baby Doe story is captivating: it is a very American story that, in a mythological sense, is an integral part of our collective unconscious. Baby Doe indeed seduced Horace Tabor, perhaps for wealth, or perhaps to survive in a hostile world. Horace Tabor surrendered to reason and became seduced by Baby Doe. Nevertheless, together, they built a monument to true love, and in the process, captivated the American public with their story. In the end, Baby Doe proved that she was a woman of sincere faith and passion, eventually, sacrificing her entire spirit and soul by keeping her vow to Horace Tabor. Baby Doe defined the essence of love and was redeemed through her sacrificial “love death,” discovered frozen to death at the Matchless Mine 36 years after her beloved Horace Tabor’s death. Heroically, Baby Doe defined Horace Tabor’s yearned-for legacy: enduring love.

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