GREENWOOD VILLAGE, Colo. -- The legend of Fiddler's Green, an imaginary afterlife where the fiddler never stops playing and the dancers never sit down, is a lovely inspiration for an outdoor performing arts and entertainment venue. Fiddler's Green Amphitheater, in a suburb south of Denver, was so named when it opened in 1988, with Dan Fogelberg giving the first concert. With 7,500 fixed seats and some 10,000 more on the capacious lawn, it has been a fixture on the summer entertainment scene every since.
Now, the Museum of Outdoor Arts, which owns the venue, has sold the naming rights for three years to a Comfort Dental, a Colorado-based chain of dental practices in five states. Live Nation operates the venue and lost no time in changing the name on its ticket-sales website.
The museum describes the amphitheater, designed by noted landscape architect George Hargreaves, as "a massive environmental earth sculpture." For a time, the official name was Coors Amphitheater, but locals never stopped calling it Fiddler's Green. And that will probably still be the case. After all, the image of eternal fiddling is a better one for an entertainment site than of endless drilling inside audience's heads.
