The Ballad of Baby Doe

The libretto to the opera The Ballad of Baby Doe, with music by Douglas Moore, was Latouche’s crowning achievement. A dramatization of the true love triangle involving the nineteenth-century Colorado silver king Horace Tabor and his two wives, Augusta Tabor and Elizabeth “Baby Doe” Tabor, the work premiered in Colorado shortly before the lyricist’s death, and became one of the most successful works in the American operatic canon. This chapter considers the work’s historical accuracy, with regard to Latouche’s libretto, and its musical and poetic essence, as well as some consideration of its critical reception.