Performed with full-throttle gusto and contagious delight, Galena Rose teems with a rich mix of characters: confidence men, keelboaters who could brag Paul Bunyan into modesty, captains who turned steamboats into race hounds, genteel eastern ladies bravely hunkering down, a black miner trying to buy his freedom, and an antislavery preacher whose firebrand sermons scorched the heads of his congregation.