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These pages contain program notes written for Redwood
Symphony. You are free to use the information in your own program
notes. If you quote me directly, please attribute it. Thanks!
These notes were edited, amended, and otherwise
improved by Eric Kujawsky, Peter Stahl, and others.
Barbara Heninger
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Douglas Moore
The Ballad of Baby Doe
Douglas
Moore (1893–1969)
began writing popular songs when he was quite young, continuing through his
studies at Yale and his stint in the Navy from 1917
to
1919.
After studying composition in Paris with Vincent d’Indy and in Cleveland with
Ernest Bloch, he took a job as a teacher at Barnard College in 1926
and
was named head of the music department in 1940,
until he retired in 1962.
Many of his works are based on American literature or historical figures,
including the orchestral piece The
Pageant of P.T. Barnum
(1924)
and the operas The
Headless Horseman
(1936)
and The
Devil and Daniel Webster
(1938).
The
Ballad of Baby Doe (1956)
is based on the lives of silver baron Horace Tabor, his first wife, Augusta, and
his second wife, “Baby” Lizzie Doe. Although the opera is named for Baby
Doe, it centers on Horace, starting at the peak of his wealth and power when he
meets Baby, the estranged wife of a miner, to their subsequent divorces and
marriage to each other, to the loss of Horace’s fortune and Horace’s death
in Baby Doe’s arms. Commissioned by Colorado’s Central City Opera House
Association and with a libretto by John Latouche, the opera offers
well-developed and complex characters, with Horace Tabor emerging as a man both
proud and vulnerable. Horace sings “Warm as the Autumn Light” to Baby Doe
the evening they first meet—it is the beginning of their romance.
February 9, 2008
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