Emmeline
Postponed to 2021-22
Learn more about Emmeline postponement
Tulsa Opera presents world-renowned composer and Artistic Director Tobias Picker’s Emmeline in a new production set across the 1930s and 1950s.
Based on a true story and the book Emmeline by Judith Rossner, the opera tells the story of an American teenager who is forced to give her illegitimate child up for adoption, only to fall from grace when family secrets are revealed twenty years later.
Originally set in mid-nineteenth-century Maine, this world-premiere production by director Tara Faircloth updates the opera for a contemporary audience.
Composed by Tobias Picker
Sung in English with English supertitles
Meet the Artists
Composer Tobias Picker makes his opera-conducting debut, leading a cast that includes soprano Madison Leonard as Emmeline, tenor Jonathan Johnson as Matthew, and Margaret Lattimore as Aunt Hannah – all in their Tulsa Opera debuts.
Steven LaBrie returns to Tulsa after his tour de force as Figaro in The Barber of Seville. Karlye Whitt (Don Giovanni), Andrew Potter (The Little Prince), and Nathan Stark (La Bohème) also return to the stage.
Madison Leonard
Jonathan Johnson
Steven LaBrie
Margaret Lattimore
Nathan Stark
Jennifer Roderer
Karlye Whitt
Andrew Potter
Laura McHugh
Jarrett Porter
Tobias Picker
Tara Faircloth
Reception
Emmeline was premiered by Santa Fe Opera in 1996, and was subsequently televised nationally on PBS’ Great Performances. The opera received its east coast premiere by New York City Opera in 1998, and in 2015, Opera Theatre of St. Louis mounted a major new production that was praised as “a work of gripping emotional intensity and extraordinary musical expressivity” (Dallas Morning News), “one of the best operas written in the past 25 years” (Wall Street Journal), and “the greatest American opera of the 20th century” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch).
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