Set Design: John FARRELL

Costume Design: Sándor DARÓCZI

Lighting Design: Susan ROTH

Stage manager: Francesca DeRENZI

Assistant Stage Manager: Kelly BROWN

Dramaturge, interpreter: Anikó SZŰCS

Director: Róbert ALFÖLDI

Tobias PICKER, described by BBC Music magazine as "displaying a distinctively soulful style that is one of the glories of the current musical scene," has had works commissioned and performed by several major orchestras and opera houses worldwide, including the New York Philharmonic, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Munich Philharmonic, the Santa Fe Opera (Emmeline, 1996), and the Metropolitan Opera (An American Tragedy, 2005). He is the recipient of the Bearns Prize (Columbia University), a Charles Ives Scholarship, a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, and the prestigious Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Virgin Classics and Wergo recently releasedTobias Picker: Keys to the City, a complete collection of Picker’s solo piano music. Recent commissions include a work for the American String Quartet (New York, January 2009) and a new ballet for the Rambert Dance Company (London, November 2010).  Tobias Picker’s music is published exclusively by Schott Music.

Synopsis:

ACT I

It is 1841 in Fayette, Maine, and Henry Mosher and his family are burying another child. Henry’s sister, Hannah, urges the Moshers to allow her to take Emmeline, the eldest daughter at age 13, to work at a textile mill in Massachusetts. With her Aunt’s help, Emmeline is hired on the spot and boarded with Mrs. Bass. Stephen Maguire, the mill-owner’s lonesome son-in-law and factory supervisor, takes advantage of the emotionally-confused Emmeline, and shortly thereafter impregnates her. Hooker, the foreman, sends for Hannah to take the disgraced girl away. Hannah conceals the pregnancy from the rest of the Moshers. The day of the birth, Hannah delivers the baby, 'born to sorrow', and arranges for immediate adoption, not even revealing the baby’s gender to its mother.

ACT II

1861, Emmeline lives at home, still unmarried, refusing all suitors. A new boarder, Matthew Gurney, arrives at the Mosher home. Emmeline and Matthew are instantly attracted to one another; he plays the harmonica for her and she teaches him to read. He decides not to follow the railroad crew to more work, but rather to stay and marry Emmeline. Henry Mosher insists Matthew is too young for Emmeline, and Harriet scorns her spinster sister. Months later, upon the death of Sarah Mosher, Harriet accuses Emmeline of abandoning their mother. When Hannah arrives to attend the funeral, she is introduced to Matthew and recognizes him as Emmeline’s secreted child. Matthew flees in horror, and despite her family’s pleading, Emmeline refuses to be outcast. She waits in her and Matthew’s unfinished home for her son to return, utterly alone.

KRISTIN SAMPSON (USA) - Emmeline Mosher (soprano)

American soprano, has appeared throughout the United States with the Santa Fe Opera, Dicapo Opera Theatre, Augusta Opera and the National Lyric Opera among others, and recently with the Szeged National Theatre. She holds degrees from Rice University and Sam Houston State University, and has been a winner and finalist in many national competitions, including the Liederkranz competition, the Metropolitan Opera Northwest Regional Auditions, and the Eleanor Lieber Competition. Her repertory includes Mimì, Juliette, Tosca, Adriana, Hanna Glawari, Micaëla and Violetta.

ZOLTÁN NYÁRI (Hungary) - Matthew Gurney (tenor)  

The Hungarian tenor, Zoltán Nyári, began his musical studies as a violinist.He graduated as an actor from the Budapest Academy of Drama amd Film, after which he started his career as a singer. He has performed numerous roles in the operetta repertory, most notably with the Operetta Theater of Budapest from 1996 to 2006, and in musicals. Since 2005, he has been on the roster of the Hungarian State Opera, singing the roles of Mozart, Verdi, Tchaikovsky, Kálmán and Lehár, among others.

IULIA MERCA (Romania) - Aunt Hannah Watkins (mezzo-soprano) 

Romanian mezzo-soprano, has appeared in opera’s leading roles, such as Rosina, Angelina, Carmen, Lola and Charlotte, and in international festivals and concerts. In 2004, she graduated from the Cluj Music Academy, and now performs with the Cluj National Opera. She has won several competitions, including the Hariclea Darclee International Singing Competition, Grand Prize. Her recordings include a 2005 DVD release of vocal works by G. Enescu.

John FARRELL, is the resident designer for Dicapo Opera Theatre where he has created over 50 productions since 1992. Mr. Farrell has also designed for Brooklyn Academy of Music, Naked Angels, The Juilliard School, One Dream, The Directors’ Company, AMAS Repertory Theatre, Theatreworks USA, The Arclight, The John Houseman and The Douglas Fairbanks Theater. In Mexico City, John has done two productions for Morris Gilbert: Fiddler on the Roof and Besame Mucho. Across the United States, some notable productions include Sacco and Vanzetti at the Tampa Opera, La Vie en Bleu at The Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia, The Summer of ‘69 off-broadway in New York, and Dodsworth at Casa Mañana in Texas. Mr. Farrell has been the exclusive Set and Illusion Designer for the Magician Criss Angel since 1993, overseeing four seasons of “Mindfreak” for A&E and a live show at the Luxor Casino in Las Vegas.

Sándor DARÓCZI is a graduate of the Art Department of Kaposvár Univerity where he studied stage design with Róbert Menczel and Ágnes Gyarmathy. He has worked with the Csiky Gergely Theatre in Kaposvár, with Böbe Bodor at Pécs National Theatre (Ervin Lázár: SquareRoundedForest), with Attila Béres at the Budapest Operetta Theatre (Feydeau: The Dupe, Lehár: The Merry Widow), and with Péter Telihay in Játékszín (Moliére: George Dandin). He first worked with Róbert Alföldi at the Bárka Theatre on a production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Anikó SZŰCS is currently a PhD candidate in Performance Studies at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. Between 2000 and 2005 Ms. Szucs was the resident dramaturg of Vígszínház (Comedy Theatre) in Budapest, where she worked in the productions of Comedy of Errors, Ostrovsky’s Diary of a Scroundrel, Neil LaBute’s The Shape of the Thing, and an adaptation of Ovid’s Metamorphosis. She worked as a translator and dramaturg for director Róbert Alföldi in the production of The Crucible by Robert Ward produced by Opera Festival and Competition with Mezzo Television in coproduction with Dicapo Opera Theatre in 2008, and in the production of Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare,Portland Center Stage, Portland, Oregon in 2004. Ms. Szucs was also a translator and dramaturg for Enikő Eszenyi in

A Man’s A Man by Bertolt Brecht atArena Stage, Washington D.C. Ms. Szucs also worked as an Interpreter for the Lincoln Center Festival in New York and the Budapest Spring Festival.

Samuel BILL made his conducting debut with the Dicapo Opera Theatre in 2006, and has since been engaged to conduct nearly a dozen productions, including the American premiere of the chamber orchestra version of Tobias Picker's Therèse Raquin. Mr. Bill studied conducting, piano and organ at the Bratislava State Conservatory in his native Slovakia, and then received full scholarship to complete his Master's degree at Montclair State University in New Jersey.  He further developed his conducting skills at the Juilliard School studying with Maestro Vincent LaSelva, and completed his Doctoral studies in orchestral conducting at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.  Since 1997, he has been the associate conductor of the Montclair Chamber Ensemble under the direction of New York Philharmonic violinist Oscar Ravina.Other conducting credits include Shaker Mountain Opera in the Berkshires, the Manhattan Virtuosi, Members of the Albany Symphony Orchestra and Asian-American Symphony Orchestra, the Bethesda Summer Music Festival in Maryland, and the Amalfi Coast Music Festival.

Róbert ALFÖLDI is recognized as one of the most diverse artists in Hungary. He is an actor, director, painter, media phenomenon and a true devotee of opera and classical music. Between 1992 and 2000 he was a company member of the Vígszínház (Comedy Theatre of Budapest). Since 1995, Alföldi has been in demand internationally as a director, and is a constant participant in the National Theatre Festival in Hungary. In 2003, he directed his first opera, Faust by Gounod, in Szeged, for which the National Theater named him Best Director.  Opera credits since then include Verdi’s Attila (July, 2004), in the renewed Margitsziget at the Open Air Theatre, Le Balcon by Péter Eötvös, Bartók’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle at the International Opera Festival in Miskolc (2005), and three small works by Charpentier for the Opera of Versailles, France. Alföldi directed Dicapo Opera Theatre’s wildly successful production of Robert Ward’s The Crucible (New York City, 2008), which went on to win First Place in the 2008 Mezzo TV Opera Festival & Competition. From March 2006 to April 2008 he was the General Director of the Bárka Theatre, and since July 2008, Róbert Alföldi serves as the General Director of the National Theatre.