Starring Kara Shay Thomson, Grant Youngblood & Jonathan Burton Photography by Amanda Tipton
“Despite CCO’s minuscule backstage space, Jefferson Ridenour’s sets furnished the staging with sufficient detail. Act one’s Polka Saloon implied a back room via a stage left doorway opposite the bar, vertically encircled by a stairwell purposed for platforming Minnie’s hypertheatrical entrance, breaking up the miners’ scuffle with a warning shot in the air. A sign reading “a real home for boys” topped the bar. Her Act two cabin, the usual table, fireplace, bed, and loft, included an item frequently omitted, the bearskin rug she sleeps on, complete with the bear’s head. Unlike the Met’s famous Act three set, which looks like half a town imported whole from Guadix, CCO’s production returned to the forest clearing specified in the libretto, about sixteen tree trunks centerstage…”
- Benjamin Torbert, Opera Wire
“ Director Fenlon Lamb moved the action from the Sierras (1849) to the Rockies (1859) to accentuate the local gold rush [in Central City, CO]. Papermoon Opera Production’s creatively impressionistic set utilizing projected documents and photographs emphasized this… ”
- David Shengold, Classical Voice North America
“…the use of contrasting and unexpected textures of varying paper materials lends to the impermanent feel of the ramshackle, Wild West settlement and speaks to the more poetic nature of the romantic storyline. With trees made of paper tubing [the stark winter landscape for Act Three], saloon walls in slats of cardboard [decorated to form multiple levels and rooms in Act One that transformed into Minnie’s snowbound cabin in Act Two], and rocks forged from Tyvek [at the front corners of the proscenium], the Papermoon team found creative solutions to the rigors of realism.”
- Director Fenlon Lamb quoted in Central City Puccini by Laura Stanfield Prichard, The Boston Musical Intelligencer
