Denver Magazine / July 2009 / Bel Canto

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Bel Canto

The beauty of opera has been a part of life, on and off, in this small mountain mining town for well over a hundred years.

Amid the cacophony of poker tables and slot machines that fills the Central City/Black Hawk historic district’s nearly 30 casinos stands a handsome stone-and-brick building as testament to the boom-and-bust cycles of Central City itself. Legend has it that a spirit wanders the 131-year-old Central City Opera House: the specter of a former caretaker whose cigar smoke can be smelled wafting about the building’s interior. Despite various economic downturns, the opera house has persevered, and has never quite given up the ghost.

In 1878, when gold ruled the day — Central City earned the nickname “the richest square mile on earth” — the 550-seat Central City Opera House opened directly next door to the luxurious Teller House hotel. Cornish and Welsh miners assisted in its construction, bringing to life the blueprints of Robert S. Roeschlaub, a Bavarian transplant who was Colorado’s first licensed architect. Italian arias arose over the bustling mining camp, adding culture to a locale more accustomed to fistfights and shootouts.

Despite its success, the heyday of the $23,000 opera facility was fairly short-lived. By the late 1920s, as Central City’s mining industry spiraled downward, so too did the fate of the once elegant opera house. For a while, it staggered on as a silent movie theater. On January 1, 1927, Peter McFarlane, one of the original contractors and then owner of the opera house, decided to cut his losses, closing its doors and allowing the building to fall into disrepair.

Fortunes come and go, but the ghosts of Central City remain. And these days, opera returns annually to the Central City Opera House during a six-week period each summer as a result of the work of McFarlane’s daughter-in-law, Ida Kruse McFarlane. In 1931, she, and four volunteers, formed the Central City Opera House Association, donating the opera house to the University of Denver while vowing to restore theater and opera to Central City.

On July 16, 1932, McFarlane’s dream became a reality, and the fully restored opera house opened its doors for a week of sold-out shows. More than 5,000 visitors flooded Central City to watch famed actress Lillian Gish appear in the summer production of Camille. Seventy-seven seasons later, that tradition carries on in the company’s three-month summer festival.

Big stars and legendary voices have appeared on one of the smallest stages of any professional opera house in the country, and the tiny theater’s acoustics have been described as intimate. “You feel that everyone in the house will be able to hear what you do,” says Vale Rideout, a lyric tenor raised in Fort Collins, who returns again this year as a featured performer in the Central City debut of Lucia di Lammermoor. “It’s such a beautiful place to sing and share opera.”

While Central City itself maintains a distinctly Western feel, its hills scarred by mines, yet still scenic and wild, Central City Mayor Ron Slinger calls the opera house, “the crown jewel of our historic district.” The traditional theater features trompe l’oeil paintings of winged horses on each side of the stage and antique gold stars accentuating the theater curtains. It’s a steep climb up to the balcony, which seats 250; the orchestra level holds another 300, making it the equivalent of a small European opera house.



Although building maintenance suffered during the 1950s, today the town receives millions in restoration funds thanks to the area’s popular gaming industry. In 1973, the opera house was designated a historic landmark, and new seating was installed in 1999. Today, the fully restored building is home the nation’s fifth-oldest opera company.

In 1996, Pelham Pearce was named the managing director of Central City Opera, innovating the festival’s performances to incorporate not only well-known works of operatic art, but contemporary American pieces as a way of attracting additional, perhaps more mainstream-oriented patrons. This year, the three productions at the theater come from the past three centuries: Handel’s Rinaldo, Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, and Tony award–winning composer Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music (a 1973 Broadway production once described as “a Manhattan jukebox opera”).

With the Bonfils-Stanton Foundation Artists Training Program, community outreach curriculums, and education initiatives, Central City Opera has dedicated itself to cultivating a new generation of opera enthusiasts, and the summer festival is the company’s biggest draw. “It’s an exciting time,” says Mayor Slinger of the opera season. “I actually wish that they could go year-round, rather than the three-month window that they’re there.”