Zeffin Quinn Hollis directs
Julia Aks, Steven J. Vail
& Megan Vail
in Ballad of Baby Doe

October 22, 24m, 26, 28, 30, & 31m, 2010


The Ballad of Baby Doe Music by Douglas Moore Libretto by John Latouche Directed by Zeffin Quinn Hollis Musical director David Aks In the 1880's American West, when overnight fame and fortune seemed closely in reach to anyone with a shovel, one man built an empire and found a connection that rivaled the great loves of history. Horace Austin Warner Tabor relives the path that brought him to the highest pinnacle and lowest depths, with only on "true thing" surviving-- his love for Baby Doe.

Join conductor David Aks for an Opera Talk, one hour before each performance (6:30 pm for 7:30, 1 pm for 2pm shows)

Friday, Oct 22, 7:30pm
Sunday, Oct 24, 2pm matinee
Tuesday, Oct 26, 7:30pm
Thursday, Oct 28, 7:30pm
Saturday, Oct 30, 7:30pm
Sunday, Oct 31, 2pm matinee

FEATURING ZAJACSTUDIO singers: Julia Aks as Choreographer and Jezebel! Suzanne Lewinson (24th, 28th, and 30th) as "Mama McCourt"
Megan Vail as "Sarah", Augusta's dearest Friend
Steven Vail as "Fogerty" & a Washington Dandy

Ticket pricing
* General Admission $20
* Seniors $17
* Students $15

CSUN Campus Theatre
18111 Nordhoff St., (At Etiwanda Ave)
Los Angeles, CA, 91330

Box Office 818-677-2488
Click Here to buy Tickets @ Ticketmaster

Parking on campus is by permit seven days a week. Daily permits prices have raised to $6 and are available from dispensing machines and attendant booths.

The best place to park is in B1 parking lot located on the corner of Nordhoff & Darby.

IF YOU PARK AT CSUN WITHOUT A PASS, YOU WILL GET A TICKET!!!



Director's Notes on the Production:

Does your life really “flash before your eyes” right before the end?

"Baby Doe" is such an interesting opera whose soul is as beautiful and as difficult to liberate as the woman herself. Although, the opera has been praised for its music, historians have debunked its loose and inaccurate treatment of history. In addition, the title of the opera leads most to assume that it is Baby Doe’s story; but if that were true, wouldn’t there be a third act encompassing the thirty-five year vigil she kept at the Matchless Mine after Tabor’s death? Instead, we see in the final scene that it is Horace recalling his early life. And on closer examination, we realize the entire piece is a recollection and “reinvention” of Horace Tabor’s personal history, written and told by the man himself. Tabor does his best to recall the most significant moments in his life which he believes brought him to this end, penniless and fighting against the entire world with only Baby Doe by his side.

Demons of past choices haunt us all, and years morph the past into composite visions and heightened caricatures of the people that steered our paths toward our current destinations. We see Tabor is no different, transforming his hard working and loyal first wife, Augusta, into a cold-fish taskmaster. His “Cronies,” the men that were his closest companions, are reduced to fair-weather friends who dump Horace at the smallest sea change. Their wives, Augusta's friends, are boiled down even further to a mere gaggle of strident chickens squawking their constant and myopic disapproval of risk-taking and passion.

Perspective is everything and every circumstance holds multiple truths. Is Baby Doe a gold-digging whore, a femme fatale, or a damsel in distress in the right place at the wrong time? Why do we insist there is only one answer? Can’t all be true? Can't she have an agenda AND be honest all at the same time? Regardless of what deduction we make of Baby Doe (historians have been most unkind), it is easy to see that HAW Tabor thought that Baby Doe was the “only real thing” in his life. Their relationship was the true embodiment of sexual and romantic love: holy, real, and untouched by the vulgarities of everyday life and societal constraints. In hindsight we can always dissect the carcass post-mortem and come to the most sterile of conclusions. But a glaring fact remains that, in a time when very few stepped outside the lines of religion and society’s inflexible eye, these two people had the amazing courage to shed their loveless marriages and join together in a supernatural union for richer and poorer that not even death could part.

So…Welcome to the Tabor Grand Theater, where moments before his death, Horace Tabor comes to re-live his meteoric rise and fall and evaluate his own culpability in the most important relationships of his life.


View All Events