![](https://cdn.statically.io/img/static01.nyt.com/packages/flash/multimedia/ICONS/transparent.png)
The audience in the Amargosa Opera House on Oct. 1, 2005.
Sam Morris/Las Vegas Sun, via Associated Press; thumbnail, Monica Almeida/The New York Times, 2004
Marta Becket
Died on January 30, 2017 at age 92
Ms. Becket was a New York ballerina and Broadway dancer who peered into an abandoned social hall in Death Valley Junction, Calif., in 1967 and visualized her future: a theater of her own. She and her husband settled there and built the Amargosa Opera House, where she performed for the next 40 years, turning it into a cultural institution and attraction to tourists, ranchers, farmers and even prostitutes from a local bordello. “I found my ship out here in the desert when I was 43,” she said.
Notable Deaths 2017
Remembering Mary Tyler Moore, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lewis, David Rockefeller, Trisha Brown, Glen Campbell, Dick Gregory, Edith Windsor, Sam Shepard, Tom Petty and many others who died this year.