Émilie

Émilie is a modern one-singer, multimedia tour de force about an extraordinary woman: French Enlightenment thinker Émilie du Châtelet. Émilie was many things: the brilliant physicist who first defined kinetic energy; mistress to Voltaire, among other luminaries; a prodigious mathematician and the translator of Newton’s Principia Mathematica; the author of a treatise on the happiness of women; a pioneer of what are now called financial derivatives, which she invented in part to pay off a $1 million debt to card sharks accrued in an unlucky night gambling–all achieved before she died in childbirth in 1749, when she was 42.

World-renowned soprano Elizabeth Futral sings the title role with elegant depth and extreme technical skill, singing almost continuously for the entire 75-minute work. Futral unfolds her character under the direction of Marianne Weems, best known as the artistic director of The Builders Association, whose work exploits the richness of contemporary technologies to extend the boundaries of theater.