A few days before leaving Hungary for New York, Alföldi said he had some trepidation about the four-week rehearsal period because of the difficulty of the piece. But the director of the Hungarian National Theatre is no stranger to the Dicapo. Last year, he directed a production of Robert Ward's opera The Crucible with the company that won the "best production" prize at the 2008 Mezzo opera competition.
The piece was praised by a critic writing in the New York Times as "spare but powerful".
Emmeline will be shown in New York in September, and in Hungary on November 15-16 in the Szeged National Theatre. The Hungarian tenor Zoltán Nyári will sing a lead role.
The production is one of five in the Opera Competition and Festival with Mezzo Television.
