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Girls of the Golden West interweaves stories of three Gold Rush women whose lives intersected in a small mining community of the Sierra Mountains in 1850. The opera includes historically factual events and persons that typify the hectic mix of wild optimism, greed, violence, humor, nobility and racial prejudice of the era, all played out against the serene majesty of the mountain surroundings. The principal narrative voice is that of Louise Clappe, whose letters written under the pen-name “Dame Shirley” during her eighteen-month sojourn in the rough-and-ready mining camp of Rich Bar, are among the most vivid and evocative literary sources of the Gold Rush period. In the course of her time there she witnessed frantic and often chaotic gold mining, claim disputes, destruction of the natural surroundings, whippings, murders, hangings, encounters with the local Indians and a colorful array of white, Chinese and Latino and native people, all thrown together by the shared desire for quick wealth. Dame Shirley’s language is full of wry wit, quick and alert psychological appraisals and, ultimately a deep compassion for both the human struggle and the natural beauty in which this astonishing human drama takes place. We meet Ah Sing, a prostitute, who comes to California from dire poverty in her native China in search of her own wealth and dignity; and also Ned Peters, a black cowboy and recently freed slave, whose life among the frequently violent white population is always held in delicate balance. And finally there is Josefa Segovia, a young and attractive Mexican who works a bar in the local hotel, the Empire. The opera culminates with a rising tide of violence, a dark aspect of California’s past. Attacks on immigrant workers, whether they are Chinese, Mexicans or native Indians, grow ever more violent. The true story of Josefa Segovia’s self-defence stabbing and killing of a drunken white miner on Independence Day in the town of Downieville is the dramatic core of the finale, which ends with a re-enactment of her hasty trial and hanging.

The libretto sources include the lyrics of original Gold Rush songs, passages from Mark Twain, the “Dame Shirley Letters,” newspaper accounts, political slogans, Chinese poetry from the era, and memoirs by Mexicans who worked the mines.