A Conversation with Linda Brovsky, Director
The Ballad of Baby Doe

Director Linda Brovsky, returning to Opera North after her terrific production of marriage of Figaro in 2025, says the story of Baby Doe, Augusta and Horace Tabor is “the story of America.”

Douglas Moore wrote The Ballad of Baby Doe in 1956, Colorado’s 80th year of statehood. As it happens, this year is Colorado’s 150th as well as the nation’s 250th. It’s the perfect time to take a look at where we came from and Opera North is delighted to travel that path.

As the country explores its actual origin stories and learns about the real people like the miners, Baby Doe and the Tabors who made places like Colorado, Linda says, “This is our history. Our country is explored now; but in 1880 those mining mountains were as daunting as the moon. The people who accepted the adventure didn’t know what was there. They had to depend on each other – and the Ute tribe who negotiated with them and helped them survive. Many didn’t make it. The Leadville cemetery is full of 23-year-olds. So the story of the Tabors, of Augusta and Horace, of Baby Doe and Horace, and everything they went through is one of love.”

Growing up in Colorado, the legend of Baby Doe was a story Linda knew by heart like countless generations in Colorado. She visited the Pioneer Museum with its historic artifacts of the Tabors and Doe in elementary school and now she likens the decision by Horace and Augusta Tabor to voyage out of New England to the Kansas Territory and on to Colorado to the Artemis moon mission. “Horace was pursuing a vision; Augusta was escaping the confines of New England. They had no idea what would happen next but they adventured into the unknown mountains of the West. They loved their country and loved the land and were part of the story of building America into something better.”

Back here in New England, not many know any of the details Linda grew up with. But the Tabors, Baby Doe and even the ‘minor’ characters are real people she’s excited to introduce Opera North patrons to, in an opera Beverly Sills made her own when she portrayed Baby Doe at the opera’s New York Opera premiere in 1958.

While learning the true story of Baby Doe, Opera North audiences will also have the opportunity to experience Moore’s American opera (with libretto by John Latouche -- in colloquial English) -- that most opera fans never get to see. Central City Opera in Colorado, where the opera premiered, is the only other company staging the production for its 70th anniversary.

“The Ballad of Baby Doe is so vocally demanding and emotionally, dramatically demanding, with a huge cast and 11 scene changes, it doesn’t get produced very often,” Brovsky said. “But Louis [Burkot] and I were chatting in the tent last year on one of those 95-degree days and he said, ‘what is your dream opera, that you haven’t done?’ and I said, having grown up in Colorado, ‘The Ballad of Baby Doe’ and he said, ‘mine too!’”

In addition to being the story of a Vermont stonecutter and his proper New England wife who take a risk to pursue the American Dream, Linda points out that the story – the history of turning the Colorado Territory into a state (for which Horace Tabor became both Lieutenant Governor and US Senator) – is the true story of inclusion. Abolitionists Horace and Augusta set out for Kansas from Maine in the middle of the Missouri Compromise, to make sure Kansas entered the Union as a Free and not a Slave State. Then, the mining camps of Colorado depended on accepting all comers who were willing to work hard: newly-free Black Americans, members of the local Ute tribe, Chinese laborers, those from the neighboring Mexican Territory – and immigrant Irish miners.

Baby Doe, wound up working in the mines herself, hauling the ore in Central City, Colorado when her then-husband Harvey Doe was too drunk to supervise his miners. Among them were the real people identified in Baby Doe  as “the cronies” – Sam Leach, an engineer and Postmaster; Jacob Sands, a Jewish clothing store owner; goldmine owner Barney Ford, a freed slave; and “Bushie,” William Bushnell, the owner of the Clarendon Hotel in Leadville (where the opening scene and Baby’s introduction to Horace takes place). “Even the women – like Baby Doe and Augusta Tabor – who followed their men, were cut off from what they were accustomed to, yet accepted the adventure for the opportunity to become who they wanted to be.”

“It’s the idea of inclusion,” said Brovsky. “If you try hard and have a dream, even if you come with nothing, this was a part of an America where you could realize that dream.”

For this production, Burkot and Brovsky are trying something new. Linda said, “Because the roles are vocally incredibly challenging and so theatrically demanding, Louis has cast three Principal Artists in the roles of Baby Doe, Horace and Augusta. They give the Resident Artists the chance to see how someone like that approaches the role as they work and rehearse. The young artists will undoubtedly grow professionally working in such an intensely intimate environment.”

“Ashley Fabian (Baby Doe) has the voice of an angel,” she continued. “She is a phenomenal actress and a working professional with opera companies in Pittsburgh and Indianapolis. Carla Jablonski (Augusta) is an established singer and actress as well as a chorister with The Met. Josh Jeremiah (Horace) is someone I knew as an apprentice at Cincinnati Opera who has gone on to a fine career in opera and musical theater. His specialty is new works – he’s just coming from the premiere of a new work in Hawaii.”

Having spent a season already under the tent at Blow-Me-Down Farm, Linda knows that audiences are participants in the production. “You’re in their world, not just watching and are allowed to use your imagination to fill in the blanks. One of the reasons I love Opera North is that everyone is in it for the art. They’re there for the audience and totally engrossed in doing opera right in front of them.”

Linda commented she has reminded James Rotondo, “our incredible set designer”,  and “brilliant costume designer” Rebecca Ming, that “Leadville is dirty; there are dirt roads even now. Baby Doe may wear beautiful dresses, but the hem is probably muddy. That’s freeing for all of us. This is the world of ‘Gunsmoke’ and ‘Maverick’ (though these are miners, not cowboys).”

Maybe the marriage of Horace and Augusta was growing stale after 27 years. Maybe they weren’t the same people at 50 in Colorado as they’d been at 22 in Vermont and Maine. Maybe it’s a wonder Baby Doe survived her first marriage and then kept her promise to Horace, holding vigil at the Matchless Mine. “But this is an incredible love story,” Linda observed. “It’s the story of real people whose love for each other made them willing to take up adventures for big dreams and suffer hardships to realize them, accomplishing great wealth and success and then losing everything.”

“There is nothing in this story the audience can’t relate to,” Linda said. “Whether in their own lives now or in history, there’s the understanding that there could be something better if they can strike it rich. It’s the true story of the American Dream.”