At an elaborate Sunday afternoon "high tea" event in late October of 2006, the Willard InterContinental Hotel commemorated the infamous 1883 wedding of Elizabeth "Baby Doe" McCourt to Senator Horace Tabor, as part of the celebrations surrounding the reopening of the hotel's signature building at 14th and Pennsylvania Avenue: just down the street from the White House. The occasion was marked by a performance by apprentices from the Washington National Opera's Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program, of the "Wedding Scene," along with other excerpts, from Douglas Moore and John Latouche's opera The Ballad of Baby Doe. The Scene recreates with considerable historical accuracy, not to mention much beautiful music, the Tabors' actual Willard Hotel wedding reception, which marked the zenith of the Colorado "Silver King's" fairy-tale career.

Below you'll be able to see "the wedding" segment of the performance, some photos from that afternoon, the narrator's script for the event (which contains musical and historical background for the opera excerpts used in the performance), and a review from the following day's Washington Post. We're deeply grateful to the Washington National Opera for their generous permission to use the attached video.

Wedding Scene Video. Click HERE to view it.
Washington National Opera and The Willard InteContinental Hotel ©, 2006. Used with permission.

Cast:
Elizabeth "Baby Doe" McCourt....Elizabeth Andrews Roberts
Horace Tabor....Trevos Scheunemann
Mama McCourt....Claudia Huckle
Priest....Greg Warren
Chester A. Arthur....Byron Jones*
Footman....VaShawn Mollwain*
Wedding Guests....Samantha McElhaney* & Magdalena Wór
Dandies....Obed Ureña & Yingzi Zhang

Narrator...D. Kanzeg
Conductor...Benjamin Makino
Pianist...Thomas Rimes
Stage Director...Andrew Dorf

*guest artist