Critics Pick

Emmeline by Tobias Picker

Venue: Cinnabar Theater
Date: Sat May 29, 2010 8:00pm
City: Petaluma
Price Range: $20-$35
Tickets: Box Office

Cinnabar Theater

Massachusetts, 1841. 13-year-old Emmeline is sent to work in the mills to help support her family, who have fallen on hard times. Though circumstance is not kind, the years pass and she returns to her family. The creation of the railroad brings new workers to her town. One young man falls in love with Emmeline, and takes her as his wife. But the wedding celebration reveals terrible complications. Tobias Picker’s unabashedly Romantic score sets Judith Rossner’s retelling of the Oedipus story from Jocasta’s point of view. “Emmeline promotes an old habit of music that three generations of nontonalists have been unable to break: that harmony of the spirit equals musical consonance. It is a pleasure to come across a new American opera that works this well.” –Bernard Holland, The New York Times