At a time when many contemporary operas seem either to rejoice in their musical density or to retreat into a kind of puerile note-spinning, Carlisle Floyd’s “Susannah” comes across like a warm breeze from a more innocent era in the American musical theater.
It is direct and accessible in ways that modern operas are not supposed to be. It is powerfully theatrical, with a comfortably melodic score that imitates American hymnody and folk song without ever quoting actual tunes.It puts a more-or-less contemporary American spin on an ancient story, updating the familiar Apochryphal tale of Susanna and the elders while transplanting it to the fictional Appalachian hamlet of New Hope, Tenn., a remote community where self-righteous bigotry, meanness and hypocrisy lurk just below the puritanical surface.
It contains juicy singing and acting roles for its central characters, the innocent mountain girl Susannah and her accuser (and eventual seducer), the itinerant preacher Olin Blitch.
Small wonder that “Susannah” has become one of the most-produced American operas of the past 40 years; since the work’s premiere in Tallahassee, Fla., in 1955, it has racked up well over 200 productions in this country alone, and its success has far outstripped that of Floyd’s 11 other stage works.
Small wonder, too, that the Lyric Opera of Chicago eventually settled on “Susannah” in its search for viable American operas and music-theater pieces to present as part of its “Towards the 21st Century” program.
Appropriately enough, the new Lyric production, opening Saturday night at the Civic Opera House, is an all-American affair. It stars soprano Renee Fleming, making her Lyric debut in the title role, and bass Samuel Ramey, as the Rev. Blitch. The Goodman Theatre’s Robert Falls (making his Lyric directing debut) and designer Michael Yeargan are heading Lyric’s creative team, with George Manahan making his house debut on the podium.
Floyd’s plot follows a swift line of development. The orphaned 19-year-old Susannah Polk lives with her brother Sam in an isolated mountain cabin. An itinerant preacher, Olin Blitch, is attracted to the young girl, as are the church elders; their jealous wives declare that anything so pretty must be evil. When the elders spy Susannah bathing in a baptismal creek near her home, they mask their lust with moral indignation.
The church folk revile the girl, for reasons she cannot comprehend, and Blitch fails to provoke her into public repentance. He comes calling and sexually coerces her; she is too weary to resist. Discovering her virginity, he is overcome with remorse. For both victim and victimizer, however, it is too late. The church folk return, unmoved, to their petty lives, and Susannah is doomed to remain a pariah.
Conversations with the composer, the principal singers and members of the Lyric creative team between rehearsals for “Susannah” suggest, however, there is much more to Floyd’s opera than a surface reading of its simple, straightforward narrative and conservative musical language would reveal.
With its theme of innocence brought down by wrongful accusation and suspicion, the work bore a chilling subtext at the time of its first performance (the late Erich Leinsdorf conducted the New York City Opera premiere in 1956), when the Red-baiting atmosphere of the Army-McCarthy hearings was still vivid in the minds of many Americans.
“Over the years, I tended to forget the McCarthy subtext of the opera, but in the last five to 10 years it came back to me that that was very much the temper of the times,” says the 67-year-old Floyd, in a melodious drawl that reflects his South Carolina upbringing.
“The atmosphere of collective moral superiority, of mob psychology, was a stain that infiltrated almost every aspect of our lives; I always thought these things were appalling. The attack and destruction of innocence is always heartbreaking.”
If McCarthyism resonated in the background while Floyd was composing “Susannah,” so did more contemporary events while director Falls and designer Yeargan were preparing the new Lyric production.
Falls, who read through the score during the 1991 Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings, suggests the oppression of single women in a patriarchal society is more relevant today than when “Susannah” was new.
“What amazes me is that, while this piece was written almost 40 years ago, I find it very fresh, very alive and contemporary in what it’s saying, how it looks, how it moves; there is nothing at all dusty about this opera,” says Falls, the Goodman’s artistic director since 1986.
“The idea of woman-as-presumed-seducer, ostracized by the male world, remains very relevant, from a political and human stance. Unfortunately, in our world today, we don’t have to look too far to see mob psychology in operation.
“The other thing is, I’ve done a lot of work in the theater with American classics by Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams and others, so I have a great interest in taking great American works and looking at them as freshly as I can.”
All three men-Floyd, Falls and Yeargan-grew up in small towns in South Carolina, Illinois and Texas, respectively, and each believes his upbringing drew him that much closer to the substance of “Susannah.” Falls says that as he read and researched the opera, images from his childhood in Ashland, Illinois, inevitably came into creative play.
Designer Yeargan’s half-stylized, half-realistic evocations of rural, fundamentalist America-bathed in lighting designer Duane Schuler’s stark yellows and blues-owe less, he says, to personal experience than to the need to create a show that moves with cinematic fluidity, that will hold the audience in its grip for a taut two hours of music-theater.
“The music has such a charged emotional quality to it that we felt we should go with the score, in a way,” the designer explains.
For inspiration, he says he studied a variety of Thomas Hart Benton paintings “because I love the way he swirled people and objects around; so many of his works seem to be charged with a kind of sexual atmosphere. The other jumping-off point was the austerity and the strange, repressed sexuality that a lot of Grant Wood’s paintings seem to have.
“So I took both of those elements and started playing around with them, filtering them through my own sensibilities. Although the designs are stylized, they are still very firmly rooted in the architecture of the period and setting,” says Yeargan, a name familiar to Lyric-goers for his “Antony and Cleopatra” set designs two seasons ago.
However regressive Floyd’s musical idiom may sound to jaded late-century ears, conductor Manahan insists the score is expertly crafted and perfectly suited to the dramatic purposes of the opera.
“I had conducted it for the first time 12 years ago, with Carlisle directing,” says Manahan, who directs the Richmond, Va., Symphony. “When I began to restudy it, I realized I had forgotten how much music there is underneath. It’s quite dissonant at times-not complex, but short and to-the-point. There’s no fat; everything moves the story ahead.”
Fleming, for her part, is quick to praise the firm sense of teamwork that prevails in this Lyric production.
“The whole atmosphere of this production is one of happy collaboration,” the American soprano says. “Nobody, including the singers, is having any ego problems; we are simply working hard. I
love the way Floyd’s music is written for the voice-it’s so comfortable. And the way he sets speech rhythms is just brilliant.
“Bob Falls has really worked hard at getting us inside our characters, inside each scene. I couldn’t have asked for more help. It has been a joy.”
What makes “Susannah’s” popular success all the more remarkable is that 37 years ago, when the opera had its New York premiere and won the New York Music Critics Circle Award, there were hardly any professional American opera companies willing to commit themselves to producing contemporary works. The burgeoning of the regional opera movement and the rise of the American singer to world prominence were still 15 to 20 years in the future.
“For young composers such as myself, there were so few opera houses that could successfully launch a career,” Floyd recalls. “Today there are at least 20 companies that can mount a new work by a new composer and do a first-class job of it.
“And the young singing actors that have come onto the American scene! There probably has never been anything like it in this country. Basically what my work with the Houston Opera Studio (with which he serves as artistic adviser) has done for me is to underscore my belief in the American singer. I think they are a wonderfully gifted group, probably the most adaptable and best-trained musically of any singers that have ever come along.”
How different the situation was 38 years ago, when “Susannah” had its first performance at Florida State University, where Floyd was a faculty piano professor.
A friend had suggested the Apocryphal tale of Susanna to him as a potentially fertile subject for an opera. But the composer did not read the original story until after he had finished his updated version. Once the university had consented to giving the premiere, Floyd took the score to singers Phyllis Curtin and Mack Harrell, who were immediately enthusiastic.
It was Curtin and Harrell who created the roles of Susannah and Blitch, and Curtin repeated her memorable portrayal for the City Opera, opposite Norman Treigle’s fire-and-brimstone depiction of Blitch. “Susannah” became a hit on the college circuit before it entered the repertory of various larger professional companies. Chicago has heard productions by City Opera, the Metropolitan National Company and, most recently, by Chicago Opera Theater, in 1986.
So it’s not for nothing that Floyd fondly refers to “Susannah” as his “Old Lady River.” Quips the composer: “It just keeps rolling along.”
Back in the late 1950s, he recalls, “a certain young conductor who was very full of himself told me, `This work will never be appreciated beyond two or three states.’ Fortunately, it has proved him wrong. Without trying to flatter myself, I think the piece is completely honest in what it sets out to do.”
For director Falls, the primary challenge of bringing “Susannah” to life on the operatic stage was delineating the psychological line of the drama, step by step, so as to make Susannah’s tragedy as vivid as possible for the audience.
“My hope is that, seeing this work as performed by the kind of singing actors we have, backed by a full Lyric Opera production, will be revelatory. `Susannah’ has remained in the repertory for very clear reasons, and I think those reasons are going to be even more clear on a large stage like the Lyric’s.”
