Unbroken

A Gilded Age Heiress Stays Strong

An Opera in Two Acts

Composer and Librettist: Randall Shinn

(Libretto complete, Music in progress.)

Duration: c. 100 minutes.

Orchestra: 2121 2210 1perc strings

A link to recorded samples of Emma Refuses to Leave.

Notes: In 1895 a young heiress, Emma Wingate, travels west to visit her uncle, who is marshal of a Western boomtown. At a dance, she sees her uncle try to arrest train robber Victor Ralston. Ralston outdraws her uncle and kills him.

She inherits her uncle’s modest ranch with its view of the mountains, and she loves living there. But Ralston has learned Emma won shooting contests as a teenager and becomes obsessed with her. He believes her fate is to become his partner in crime. He imagines them becoming legendary. He tries to woo her, and later, he threatens to abduct her if he has to.

If she stays on her ranch, she faces Victor’s ongoing threats. If she returns to her property in Pittsburgh, she leaves behind both the ranch and her growing interest in Doctor Diego De La Rosa, a well-regarded bachelor.

Diego urges her to return East until Ralston is dead or in prison. Emma refuses, even if staying means facing Ralston in a gun fight.