Arts & Events

New: Carlisle Floyd’s SUSANNAH: A Folksy American Tragedy at San Francisco Opera

Reviewed by James Roy MacBean
Monday September 08, 2014 - 03:51:00 PM

Back in 1952, Carlisle Floyd was a 24-year-old pianist and assistant professor of music at Florida State University, when in conversation with a graduate student he was reintroduced to the Apocryphal story of “Susannah and the Elders.” Floyd recalls im-mediately recognizing the operatic potential of this Biblical tale: “the innocent and virtuous Susannah’s being spied upon while bathing by the lustful Elders, who, when she refuses their advances, falsely accuse her of being an adulteress.” The young composer immediately began writing his own libretto. Carlisle Floyd completed the score in March, 1954, and obtained permission from FSU to stage his opera there with professional singers. The world premiere of Floyd’s SUSANNAH took place at FSU on February 24, 1955, and was an immediate success. The very next year Erich Leinsdorf brought SUSANNAH to New York City Opera, where it won a New York Music Critics’ Circle Award and ran for five consecutive seasons.  

In writing his own libretto, Floyd drew on his childhood memories of Methodist revival meetings in the mountains of South Carolina, where his father was a devout and strict fundamentalist. Floyd updated the tale of “Susannah and the Elders,” placing it in a remote valley in the mountains of eastern Tennessee during summer revival meet-ings. He also changed the story from one of vindicating Susannah and punishing the Elders, as in the Apocryphal book of Daniel, to a tale of tragic loss of innocence, in which the virginal Susannah is first resented by the women of the community for her good looks, then is reviled by all for bathing nude in a forest creek, and finally is sexually violated by none other than the newly arrived preacher, Reverend Olin Blitch.  

Musically, Floyd’s score is a mixture of American folk idioms – square dances and folk songs – and neo-Romantic orchestration. The libretto is full of rural dialect that captures the speech of its Appalachian subjects. On Saturday, September 6, Floyd’s SUSANNAH received its official premiere at San Francisco Opera with con-ductor Karen Kamensak at the podium. When the curtain rises, following an overture paired with lovely video shots of mountain landscapes of the Great Smoky Mountains, a square dance is in progress, where the 19-year-old Susannah is the center of attention. The men of New Hope Valley all want to dance with her, while the village wives, led by the acid-tongued Mrs. McClean, warn that she’s evil and will come to no good. Even the newly arrived preacher, Reverend Olin Blitch, sung by bass Raymond Aceto, invites her to dance. In this opening scene, Susannah, portrayed here by soprano Patricia Racette, is the focus of everyone, but is seen and not heard.  

In the opera’s second scene, Susannah has returned to her cabin where she tells Little Bat McClean, a troubled boy who follows her everywhere, about her success at the dance. Then Susannah launches into a dreamy, heartfelt aria, “Ain’t it a pretty night,” in which she sings of the beauty of the star-filled sky and wonders what lies beyond the mountains. One day, she sings, she’ll travel to the big cities and see the pretty clothes the city-women wear. But she’ll always come back to her home in this beautiful valley. As Susannah, Patricia Racette, celebrating her 25th anniversary at San Francisco Opera, sang this lovely aria rapturously. Little Bat, sung by tenor James Kryshak, adoringly tells her how pretty she looks. But he runs off quickly when Susannah’s brother, Sam, returns from hunting. Susannah tells Sam about the dance that evening, then coaxes Sam, sung by tenor Brandon Jovanovich, (whom I heard in this same role in a 2002 production of SUSANNAH by Festival Opera, Walnut Creek), to sing the “Jaybird” song their father used to sing. Sam complies with a lively, high-stepping version of this folksy tune. 

In Act I, Scene 3, Susannah retreats to a secluded creek deep in the forest, where she sheds her clothes and bathes nude, discreetly offstage. The church elders happen by in search of the remote creek where they intend to hold baptisms led by Reverend Blitch. When the elders espy Susannah bathing nude, they are initially transfixed by her beauty. But their appreciation and lust soon turn to anger, and they vow to denounce Susannah when they return to town. When she shows up that evening at a church picnic, Susannah is shunned by all, led, as usual, by the self-righteous Mrs. McClean, excellently sung by veteran mezzo-soprano Catherine Cook.  

Susannah returns home, perplexed by her ostracism. Little Bat arrives and tells her the church elders saw her bathing nude in the creek. “Ain’t nothing wrong in that,” exclaims Susannah. “I been bathin’ there all summer.” Little Bat then confesses the church elders coerced him into saying Susannah “had loved him up,” in other words, seduced him. Indignant, Susannah chases Little Bat away. When her brother returns, she tells him what happened. Sam sings a brief aria about the way folks are: how quick they are to look for evil, when the evil’s in themselves. Act I ends with an unfortunately brassy, pretentious outpouring from the orchestra. 

As Act II begins, Sam prepares to go on an overnight hunting trip; but he urges Susannah to attend that evening’s prayer meeting “to show she ain’t afraid.” Against her better judgment, Susannah does so. Reverend Blitch’s revival meeting, as set to music by Carlisle Floyd, is a famous piece of Americana. But I personally find that the composer has not quite captured the unique verbal rhythms of revivalist preachers as they work up to a fever pitch the fears and hopes of their parishioners. It is an honest effort, however; and Blitch’s preaching has its effect on Susannah, who mesmerized by the charismatic Reverend Blitch, involuntarily starts towards him when he invites her to renounce her sins. Suddenly, however, Susannah revolts, and, convinced that she is innocent of sin, bolts from the church.  

Back home, Susannah sings a mournful aria in which she longs for the return of summer’s warmth. Patricia Racette delivered this aria with poignantly moving sens-itivity. But this aria has a disturbing subtext, for it also sings of longing for a lover’s return, if only for one night, and of her baby that needs a name. In short, this aria is one of lost innocence, and as such, it seems strangely out of place, coming before and thus prefiguring the ultimate loss of innocence that awaits Susannah when Reverend Blitch arrives at her house.  

In this scene, Floyd’s libretto reveals another side of Reverend Blitch. When he fails to exhort Susannah to repent her alleged sins, he starts to leave. But, drawn to her beauty, he opens up and confides that he is a lonely man who longs for a woman. Susannah, now too exhausted and depressed to resist fate, allows him to lead her into the house, where he spends the night. As Reverend Blitch, bass Raymond Aceto was vocally at his best in this scene, where Floyd’s libretto makes him almost sympathetic. 

In the following scene, staged in this production by Director Michael Cavanagh and Set Designer Erhard Rom beneath a brilliantly illuminated giant cross, Reverend Blitch, alone in the church, prays fervently for forgiveness, acknowledging that he has deflowered a virginal Susannah. When his parishioners enter and he seeks to persuade them that Susannah was innocently accused, they coldly refuse to listen. However, in a touch I find totally lacking in verisimilitude, Floyd’s libretto has Susannah show up in church this morning after her deflowering by Reverend Blitch. This seems to me totally out of character, unless we interpret it as yet another mani-festation of Susannah’s utter degradation at the hands of her persecutors. Blitch unsuccessfully begs her forgiveness, and she angrily leaves the church. 

Back home, Susannah bitterly welcomes back her brother, Sam, from his over-night trip. When she tells him what happened, Sam is indignant. Grabbing a gun, he runs off looking for Blitch. A shot rings out; and, shortly, Little Bat arrives to tell that Sam has killed Blitch in the creek while the Reverend was performing baptisms. The townsfolk soon appear, vowing to lynch Sam and run Susannah out of the valley. Susannah grabs a shotgun and threatens to mow them all down. Cowed, they retreat. But an embittered Susannah, now totally cynical about human nature, remains alone, brandishing a shotgun, vowing never to be run off her land. Thus ends Carlisle Floyd’s SUSANNAH. 

Floyd has acknowledged that his early exposure to fundamentalist revival meetings struck him as “mass coercion to conform, whether people are really con-vinced of the doctrine or not. You simply bend the knee without question, which is the basis of any totalitarian society.” In many ways, although no doubt unintention-ally, Floyd’s SUSANNAH effectively dramatizes ideas originally set forth by Freud’s early colleague Wilhelm Reich in his 1933 book Die Massenpsychologie des Faschismus/The Mass-Psychology of Fascism, in which Reich argued that sexual repression often leads to mass conformity to authority. Carlisle Floyd has also acknowledged the parallels between this opera’s plot and the McCarthyist “Red Scare” tactics rampant in the USA at the time of SUSANNAH’s conception in the 1950s. Religious zeal, innuendo, and intimidation were rife in the USA at that time, and Floyd was appalled. He cites Arthur Miller’s plays THE CRUCIBLE, a tale of witch-hunting, and DEATH OF A SALESMAN, about the shallow, self-delusional bravado of American males, as influencing his own vision of a USA dangerously on the brink of totalitarian oppression. While by no means perfect, Carlisle Floyd’s SUSANNAH remains one of the very finest American operas ever created; and to this day it is the most frequently performed. It is thus high time that SUSANNAH makes its appearance in a fine San Francisco Opera production.