Vintage 1958 The Ballad of Baby Doe, Moore, Sills 3 LP Box Set Heliodor 25035

Vinyl is mint except for fine hair line scratch at end of side 2 which can not be heard when played.  Includes booklet which is in mint condition, no tears or missing pages.  Box is in VG++ condition with only a blemish on upper right front cover. 

Chorus – New York City Opera Chorus Conductor – Emerson Buckley Orchestra – New York City Opera Orchestra Vocals – Beverly Sills, Frances Bible, Walter Cassel Written-By – Douglas Moore, John Latouche

(Recorded under the auspices of the Koussevitzky Music Foundation, Inc.) 

Issued in a laid in box. Includes a 10" x 9½" 23 page Libretto with illustrations & synopsis. 

LP's are automatic sequenced. 

Note: Track durations for side A & E, the total time was given for the entire LP side and added to the first track.

 

The Ballad of Baby Doe is a 1956 two act opera by the American composer Douglas Moore that uses an English-language libretto by John Latouche.  The opera's premiere took place at the Central City Opera in Colorado in 1956.  It is Moore's most famous opera and one of the few American operas to be in the standard repertory.   Based on the lives of actual historical turn-of-the-century Leadville, Colorado figures Horace Tabor, Elizabeth “Baby Doe” Tabor, and Augusta Tabor, the opera tracks their lives from Horace and Baby Doe's meeting to the death of Horace.

In 1880, Baby Doe was a beautiful, intelligent woman who courted silver baron Horace Tabor, even though he already had a wife, the ascetic and thin-lipped Augusta. Although Baby Doe's initial motivation might have been access to Tabor's money, she came to love Tabor for more genuine reasons. Eventually Tabor left Augusta and married Baby Doe, but their relationship scandalized respectable society in Colorado and Washington, D.C.

Review:  Beverly Sills had been singing with the company for only three years when it was offered to her. On these discs, her voice is radiant, and her identification with the role seems complete. There's no Lucia-like coloratura for her to sink her teeth into; Baby Doe is for lyric sopranos, but Sills fits the bill nicely. Baritone Walter Cassel sang Tabor at the opera's première, and he repeats the role here, finding both the character's charisma and his fatal weakness. His sonorous voice reminds us that other successful roles for him were Scarpia and Jochanaan. Mezzo-soprano Frances Bible succeeds in making the thankless role of Augusta sympthetic; she excels in her moving Act Two aria, in which she agonizes over whether to offer financial support to the failing Tabor, in spite of everything that has passed between them.