Building a Bridge Through Time: Die Fledermaus at the Molly Brown House

Building a Bridge Through Time: Die Fledermaus at the Molly Brown House

One of our favorite parts of storytelling is getting to delve into the world of our characters. Creating a fictional world inspired by real life has been a particular joy for our creative team as we build our Die Fledermaus, set in Denver at the turn of the 20th century.

The idea of creating a silent film for the overture was first brought to our artistic team by stage director Peter Muller, and immediately it felt like something we had to make happen. What began as a relatively simple concept filming against a backdrop on a stage quickly grew into something much more ambitious: what if we could actually place these characters in historic Denver?

So I started sending emails. Many of them disappeared into the ether, but one found its way to Andrea Malcomb, Vice President of  Historic Denver and museum director at the  Molly Brown House Museum. We scheduled a virtual meeting with their team, and almost immediately there was excitement on both sides about what this collaboration could represent. While we are working to preserve and reimagine the history of an art form, their team is preserving the history, architecture, and stories that make Colorado's past tangible.

It felt like a natural partnership.

Peter developed the shot list for his Buster Keaton-inspired silent film, designed to play throughout the overture. From there, we began solving the practical puzzle with Music Director A.J. Wulf: how could a film remain responsive to a live orchestra, where timing is never exactly the same twice? Our solution was to run the shots through QLab, allowing the individual shots and sequences to be cued live alongside the music, much like we already do with supertitles. We also worked with the team at the Rialto Theater to troubleshoot the use of their cinema screen for it to play on. 

Then we needed someone to actually make the film.Interestingly, that connection had begun months earlier. Back in April, I saw a role posted on a Colorado casting page that seemed perfect for my husband and he ended up doing it as his acting debut in the short film Idol. The short film was directed by a promising young filmmaker, Sawyer O’Brien. When we attended Idol’s premiere in August, I met Sawyer and his family and immediately thought, This is our guy.

I told him about Die Fledermaus, Denver, the overture, and Peter’s silent-film concept. He enthusiastically came aboard.

As the pieces began falling into place, LOT’s Associate Director Emily Morris and I traveled to Denver to scout locations and visit the Molly Brown House Museum.

Walking through the house, we kept encountering details that made this collaboration feel strangely at home there: opera glasses in Molly’s bedroom, early cameras, and reminders of a woman who cultivated an extraordinary range of interests. We learned about her musical studies, her singing and instrumental pursuits, and her decision later in life to go to New York and study acting.

The more I learned about Margaret Brown and her appetite for learning, her determination to create change, her devotion to family alongside her own ambitions, and her willingness to continually reinvent herself: the more I understood why standing in her home felt so resonant. She famously embraced the idea of being a “daughter of adventure,” and something about that spirit struck me at my core: Margaret Brown and I would have gotten along famously I suspect. 

Though separated by more than a century, for one day opera and film allowed us to build a small bridge across that distance. We were bringing artists, period costumes, cameras, music, and storytelling into a home created by a woman who loved many of those very things. Standing there, it was difficult not to feel that Molly would have understood exactly why we wanted to do it. 

We left the Molly Brown House with a deeper understanding of the historical world surrounding our Die Fledermaus and even more inspiration for the characters inhabiting it. Our Denver setting isn't simply a backdrop; it has become another layer of the storytelling.

We hope that when you see the finished production, you feel some of that intention and some of the delight we've experienced in discovering the world behind it.

And who knows?

Maybe Molly herself will make an appearance.

Chacun à son goût!

Kelsie