In 1932, volunteers restored the Central City Opera building and established the country’s fifth-oldest opera festival. Credit: Amanda Tipton
At some point every year, Central City starts feeling less like a casino town and more like an adult opera summer camp.
“There’s no experience like it that I know of in the opera world,” says Central City Opera (CCO) performer Jennifer DeDominici. “Eureka Street turns into an opera campus for a few months, where the people walking down the street are the people who star in tomorrow’s opera.”
That atmosphere returns June 27 through Aug. 2, as CCO prepares to launch its 94th summer festival. The season includes The Marriage of Figaro, The Ballad of Baby Doe and Master Class, alongside concert performances.
At the same time, company leadership is pushing forward with plans to expand activity beyond the summer festival calendar. These efforts aim to improve the area by restoring CCO’s historic buildings and transforming the city into a year-round tourism destination centered on the opera house.
“Central City is rustic, historic, quirky and isolated,” DeDominici says, “yet there’s this magical little jewel box opera house that puts on world-class opera.”
Built in 1878 by Welsh and Cornish miners during Colorado’s mining boom, the 550-seat venue was designed by Robert S. Roeschlaub and decorated with elaborate trompe l’oeil murals by San Francisco artist John C. Massman before mining collapsed and the opera house fell into disrepair. In 1932, volunteers restored the building and established the country’s fifth-oldest opera festival.
Today, the theater still retains much of its original structure. The ceiling murals, painstakingly recreated after a portion of the ceiling collapsed during a 1984 performance of Cinderella, hang over a stage far smaller than those of the major opera houses (about 25 feet wide with a 17-foot proscenium at the arch’s height).
“There’s a very intricate dance that our production team has to do between rigging, lighting and scenic elements that we can fly in and out,” says CCO Managing Director of External Affairs Adam Scurto. “Not just for one show, but for all three shows, because there’s not the time to change the scheme up there between shows.”
That intimacy is part of the company’s identity.
“When you’re on stage, everyone can feel and see your entire performance, even without opera glasses,” DeDominici says. “That’s so cool because the acting goes further.”
The 2026 season leans heavily into the company’s own history. This summer marks the 70th anniversary of The Ballad of Baby Doe, which premiered at CCO in 1956. Based on the love triangle between Leadville silver magnate Horace Tabor, his first wife Augusta and Baby Doe Tabor, it remains one of the few enduring American operas in the national repertoire
This year’s production will be directed by former Central City training artist Cynthia Lawrence, who first saw the opera there as a teenager in 1976.
“By Act 2, I was enamored,” Lawrence says. “I said to my mom, ‘This is what I’m going to do for the rest of my life.’ Seeing Baby Doe there literally changed my life.”
Lawrence says the production avoids flattening its characters into heroes or villains.
“We’re not gonna play Baby Doe as a homewrecker,” she says. “The affair happened, but we’re also not gonna play Augusta as a bitch. She has to have a heart.”
The season also features Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, a sequel to last summer’s The Barber of Seville, and a production of Master Class, Terrence McNally’s play inspired by soprano Maria Callas and starring DeDominici.
“I’ll be on the opera house stage portraying an opera singer and not singing a note,” DeDominici says. “People who come to Central City likely have opinions about Maria Callas and how she should behave — I want to give them what they want while also making it my own.”
While the festival season remains CCO’s public centerpiece, the company increasingly sees its future extending beyond a few weeks of performances each year.
This summer, CCO will begin structural stabilization work on the historic Williams’ Stables building adjacent to the opera house. The 1876 structure is being reimagined as a 100-seat black box theater and year-round cultural venue. The company is also investing in a collection of historic residential properties used as artist housing, which will be converted into short-term vacation rentals as early as August or September.
“Previous CCO administrations viewed the historic properties as a nice asset in the summer but then a big burden to hold onto,” Scurto says. “We’ve flipped that on its head. We see the historic properties as real assets we can leverage into sustainability.”
The opera house itself may soon receive upgrades too, including heating improvements that would allow use beyond the summer season. These investments come as opera companies nationally continue wrestling with aging audiences and changing cultural habits.
“A big advantage we have here at CCO is our historic setting, so we try to lean into that,” Scurto says. “It’s also much more casual than the Ellie Caulkins. You can enjoy the opera in your flannel and your jeans just as well as you could enjoy it in a tux.”
That accessibility appears to be resonating. According to the company, roughly 40% of audience members each summer are first-time attendees, and attendance has grown for three consecutive years. Yet for all the company’s future ambitions, artists say the identity of CCO still comes back to the experience of making and seeing opera in a cozy mountain town.
“I love telling stories, and this opera house is conducive to storytelling in every way,” DeDominici says. “It’s not a high-tech environment, but it has the technology required for modern opera while maintaining a rustic, historic feel.”
ON STAGE: Central City Opera’s 2026 season runs June 27 through Aug. 2 at Central City Opera House, 124 Eureka St. $34+
