When it comes to sizing up Central City Opera, the only difficult question is this: Which is more precious to Colorado, the gem or the jewel box?
The multi-faceted stone is the opera company itself, which debuted in 1932, making it the fifth-oldest producer of the art form in the United States. The company has been presenting shows for 92 years now, with only a few seasons off for calamities like World War II and the coronavirus pandemic.
But there is an equal treasure in the Central City Opera House venue, which was built in 1878 during the glory days of Colorado mining when the local citizens formed a cultural committee, raised money and hired prominent Denver architect Robert Roeschlaub to design its 550-seat theater. San Francisco artist John C. Massman was commissioned to add elegant trompe l’oeil murals on the inside.
The building’s first golden age was short-lived. As the mining industry collapsed, the place fell into disrepair and was shuttered. The present Central City Opera company was formed to bring it back to life, and that arrangement has proved as enduring as the works of Mozart, Beethoven, Verdi and Puccini that have since served as its fare.
The company’s new season, which kicks off June 29, comes with a well-deserved accolade. On opening night, there will be a pre-show ceremony where it will be inducted into the Colorado Music Hall of Fame. There will be a short and formal moment honoring the organization, along with singers Cynthia Lawrence and Keith Miller and the late conductor John Moriarty.
Then it will be on with the opera, a fresh staging of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Pirates of Penzance,” which runs through Aug. 4. The other two titles on the schedule this season are Puccini’s “Girl of the Golden West” and Kurt Weill’s “Street Scene.”
It is an interesting lineup for an American opera company. There are no obvious warhorse titles on the schedule, and that seems to be how Central City fans like it. Pre-season tickets sales are up, their best pace since 2018 when COVID came around, knocking down opera makers across the globe, according to Scott Finlay, who has a long history with the company and took over as its president and CEO in October.
Programming opera is tricky, audiences are fickle, and many companies continue to search for strategies that will take them back to pre-pandemic days. Central City seems to have found its own proper path.
“We’re being very thoughtful about what we’re doing,” Finlay said in an interview last week. “You know, opera is an expensive business, and we want to be sure that we continue to present the very best art that we can while being as fiscally responsible about it as possible.”
As far as this season goes, “Pirates of Penzance,” a familiar and oft-performed comedy, is the opera that will get folks in the door. But the other two titles carry their own allure.
“The Girl of the Golden West” (“La fanciulla del West,” to opera regulars) is one of the few operas to be set in the time period when the Central City theater was first constructed. The story revolves around a saloon keeper who has to juggle the affections of two suitors, including the local sheriff. It is right at home in this setting.
“Where else can you go to watch a show that is about gold miners in an opera house that was built during the Gold Rush?,” Finlay asks. There is nowhere else.
“Street Scene,” with a libretto by Langston Hughes and Elmer Rice, was made to have mass appeal. Weill wrote it as part traditional opera, part Broadway spectacle. The music is sophisticated, but easy for wide audiences to appreciate. Even with that as a selling point, the work is not often presented by U.S. companies.
“Coincidentally, the last time we performed ‘Street Scene’ was in 1999, and the last time we performed ‘Fanciulla’ also was in 1999, so they are once again paired on our stage,” Finlay noted.
The company has programmed a number of special performances, lectures and other side shows during the season. There is a lot of information on its website (along with a very detailed archive of the company’s performances over the past nine decades which, for opera fans and historians alike, is a fascinating read).
Finlay describes the 2024 season as a moment of starting over. In addition to his appointment as CEO, the company recently recruited Alison Moritz as its new artistic director. She was appointed in February and will begin programming her first season next year.
Central City is unique among opera companies because it also owns and operates 28 historic properties in the city, which include several miner’s cottages that were built in the 1800s.
Those residences are not winterized and the company has long used them to house singers and crew during the season, leaving them vacant during the colder months. Maintaining the properties has always been both a boon for the company (because they serve as free lodging) but also a burden (since they are expensive to maintain.)
Currently, it is examining the possibility of converting the buildings into year-round, temporary rentals — Airbnb-style — that would generate revenue in support of its annual summer season.
“My real hope is that we can look at these assets as true assets going forward rather than liabilities,” he said.
IF YOU GO
Central City Opera’s 2024 season runs from June 29-Aug. 4. For tickets and info: 303-292-6700 or centralcityopera.org.
