1905 Blanche Bates is Minnie, sweetheart of the mines in Girl of the Golden West. She tends a saloon, fugitive lover and pursuing sheriff. Writer, director, producer David Belasco was no stranger to the subject, having worked as an actor in Virginia City, Nevada, during the Comstock Lode boom. Puccini would later adapt the story into the opera, "La Fanciulla del West."
SOURCE: Playbill at 12:00AM on November 14, 2011