Specters of Mine: Musicological Research in the Desert of the Opera

On November 25, 2014, I was driving through Ash Meadows Road in the state of California, the fastest way from the biggest town near the Death Valley desert, Pahrump, Nevada, to the place where I was supposed to meet with some of the ghosts I had been hunting for some time. I was headed in the direction of Death Valley Junction (current population, four). There—I was told by friends and colleagues—I would find a theater in the middle of the desert, the Amargosa Opera House and Hotel, run by an almost mythological figure who, back in the 1960s.