'Emmeline' at Cinnabar--A Brilliant, Moving Opera, Brilliantly Produced

 

Cinnabar Theater in Petaluma was founded by an operatic baritone 38 years ago, and has produced many excellent operas in the old schoolhouse on a knoll where its performing arts series and school classes are held. But the current show, Tobias Picker's EMMELINE, in its West Coast premiere, is something else again.

 

Based on a true story, fictionalized by Judith Rossner, it tells the tale of a 14 year-old girl in 19th century New England, sent to a garment factory, where she's seduced and sent home pregnant--and the doomed romance that follows 20 years of spinsterhood, in thrall to her family's sense of shame, when the past boomerangs back into the present. Picker's music is, in SF Classical Voice critic Jeff Kaliss's comment on opening night, reminiscent at times of Benjamin Britten's operas. Sublime and relentless, it carries along a story which could prove melodramatic, though it finally touches on a genuine modern sense of tragedy.

 

Yet there's humor, and wonderful little moments: Emmeline, smiling in the housing for the oppressive factory, when she sees her own face for the first time in a mirror--and, years later, smiling again at a simple tune on a harmonica, played by the young man she falls for. An unusually balaced opera, musically and dramatically.

 

Superb singing and acting by the principals, in particular the remarkable Carrie Hennessey, who runs the gamut of the years as Emmeline, a part Patricia Racette (now at SF Opera as Marguerite in a fine FAUST) originated at Santa Fe. Excellent small orchestra, conducted by Nina Shuman (Samuel Bill's arrangement) and chorus, many the young students of Cinnabar's own program, playing and singing the factory girls their own age. Excellent stage direction by Cinnabar artistic director Elly Lichtenstein. Picker has also composed an opera to Dreiser's AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY. This packs a similar social--and emotional--wallop.

 

Petaluma might seem a ways off--really not so far--and if you go, you won't forget a great, yet intimate musical and dramatic experience. Through June 13. $32-$38. (707) 763-8920; www.cinnabartheater.org

 

 

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