Tabor Opera House, Leadville, Colorado
The opera house is closed on Sundays. There are never many visitors. Depending on the time of day, you can pretty much have the whole thing to yourself. There is a short entryway then a grand staircase. Along the walls of the stairs are framed pictures of the actors and actresses who have graced the stage over the years. Over the entranceway to the main hall are three portraits: Baby Doe, Horace Tabor, Augusts Tabor. The seats are just as small and cramped as the original, although only a few original seats remain. These are in the boxes to the side of the stage and are covered in red velvet and gilding. The stage is full of equipment. Some Tabor relatives were about to do a small musical show the next week. You walk up on stage and face the empty seats. It's not a big theater by today's standards but was impressive for its time. Oscar Wilde played here. If you walk down the side stairs, the dressing rooms have been made up to appear that the actors only just left and would be back shortly. But there's no telling how much of the staging came from the thrift store down the street and how much came from the theater itself. The lighting board is only one of two left in the nation that still works (more on this later). It's a surprisingly hollow, empty place. There is no sound of the crowd, no leftover exhalation of breath lingering around the baseboards. All has long ago been leeched out of the place. Now, instead of a store front, one side of the Opera house is a mini-theater with a big screen tv where you can see a short documentary on Leadville and its history. The other side, which also used to be store front, is a combo thrift shop, memory shop, antique store where you can buy books on the Tabors, postcards of the actors and actresses, mostly actresses, who appeared in the Opera House, and a wide collection of antiques for sale which may or more likely may not even be from the same period as when the Opera House was in full swing. But being modern folks, we see something with a lot of dust on it, in antiquated style or fabric and figure, close enough. I can't believe the shop make much money though. The whole place must be manned by volunteers. It clearly is not a money-making enterprise.