Arts & Events

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. -more-

“The Vibrator Play” and “Love Letters” are the September entertainment at Piedmont Oakland Repertory Theatre starting September 6^th. -more-

"Till now I thought force and counterforce were all that Nature knows, that no third power existed besides. What puts fire out will not bring water to a boil and vice-versa. Yet here's a deadly foe of each, and when it comes, fire won't know whether to flow with the deluge, nor water to leap up to heaven with the flames." -more-