Barnum saw it as competing with his own exhibits in New York City. The road show failed to make money, in part because the famous impresario P.T. So some enterprising local businessmen quickly realized they could make money from the Discovery Tree another way: by hacking down the giant and turning parts of it into a traveling exhibit. Lamont says sequoias don't make for great lumber and firewood. "And from there on it becomes a story of typical 1800s exploitation." "Even in Europe it was a sensation," Lamont said. They were floored, and news of the Discovery Tree spread fast. "And they said, Shut up and have a drink."īut Dowd eventually convinced a crew to return to the site with him. "Dowd said, I've found the biggest tree in the world," Lamont recounted. But, at first, no one believed Dowd about his find. Dowd came across it while chasing down a bear.
Lamont said word got out about the tree in 1852, when a hunter named Augustus T. The park gets around 200,000 visitors a year, and Big Trees State Park docent Sanders Lamont said 95 percent of them come to see the 1,200-year-old hunk of wood. I was entranced by the steam rising off the lofty, chocolate-colored trunks.Īnd then I saw it. The November morning I visited Calaveras Big Trees State Park, the air in the grove was crisp and damp. "The destruction of the natural world the kind of relentless and heartless progress of this idea that the only thing that matters is money - and the Gold Rush epitomized that," Sellars said. It spoke to the bleak themes of his opera. This incongruous vision of a bunch of humans twirling and stomping all over the dead remains of one of the biggest marvels of the natural world captured Sellars' attention. "I was just stunned because, of course, it's a shocking image," Sellars said. At around 24 feet across - about the size of a small ice rink - it must have made for a bucolic setting for the two-steps and waltzes of wealthy 19th century tourists. The image shows a bunch of well-dressed couples dancing on top of the stump. Sellars first heard about the stump, which is located in Calaveras Big Trees State Park, when "Girls of the Golden West" composer John Adams e-mailed him a reproduction of an antique etching. And at the center of the stage is a massive re-creation of the Discovery Tree stump. "The stump is a vision from Dante," Sellars said on a break from rehearsals at San Francisco's War Memorial Opera House for the new opera, "Girls of the Golden West." "It's some wild rage of the spirit world that just is coming out in this twisted scream of roots."Īrtists have long romanticized California’s Gold Rush - just think of the writings of Bret Harte, or of Giacomo Puccini’s opera, "The Girl of the Golden West," the title of which Sellars and his collaborators borrowed.Ĭontrastingly, "Girls of the Golden West" tells a much darker story of greed, racism and environmental destruction. Stage director Peter Sellars recently drove three hours east of San Francisco to see the stump of what was once one of the tallest trees in the world, known as the Discovery Tree. Once one of the tallest trees in the world, The Discovery Tree tells the story of environmental destruction at the heart of the new opera, "Girls of the Golden West."
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