Bold. Brave. Brilliant.

How did the ghost of a Bisbee prostitute become the center of a new opera?

Copper Queen - Arizona Opera
The Arizona Republic

Kerry Lengel

Medium: Print

The Arizona Republic highlights Arizona Opera's workshop performance of The Copper Queen. This opera-in-progress is about the ghost of a “lady of the evening” who haunts Room 315 of the historic Copper Queen Hotel in Bisbee.

Written by composer Clint Borzoni and librettist John de los Santos, the opera was commissioned by Arizona Spark, a commissioning club founded by Arizona Opera patrons in 2014.

"This doesn’t speak well for my research techniques, but I literally typed in ‘weird stuff in Arizona,’ and after about six pages of UFOs, there was the Copper Queen."

– John de los Santos, Librettist