Only a few 20th Century operas have earned a place in the standard repertory of the world's greatest opera houses, mainly early century works by Puccini and Richard Strauss, plus a handful of post-World War II works by Benjamin Britten and Francis Poulenc. The sole American opera is Susannah, by Carlisle Floyd. It's based on the apocryphal Bible story of Susannah and the Elders, in which the elders condemn a beautiful young woman for wantoness rather than admit their own lust for her. A lifelong southerner, Floyd set the story in a primitive American Bible Belt community of the 1930s, and portrayed Susannah and her brother as marginalized members of the close-knit community; social outcasts who didn't fit in.
His first full-length opera, Susannah premiered in 1955 when Floyd was just 28 years old. Despite its immediate success, and some 700 productions since then, Susannah was not considered a legitimate part of the standard repertory until staged in 1993 by Lyric Opera of Chicago and in 1995 by the Metropolitan Opera in New York ( both productions directed by Goodman Theatre artistic director Robert Falls ) .
Lyric Opera currently is reviving its handsome production of Susannah, and invited Carlisle Floyd to town for the opening. Windy City Times caught up with the gracious and completely unpretentious Floyd for an exclusive interview.
Now retired from a long academic career, Floyd lives in Tallahassee, Fla. His other full-length operas include Wuthering Heights, The Passion of Jonathan Wade, Of Mice and Men ( from the John Steinbeck play ) , Bilby's Doll, Willie Stark ( from the Robert Penn Warren novel, All the King's Men ) , and Cold Sassy Tree. Of Mice and Men and Willie Stark both have been produced here by Chicago Opera Theatre.
Jonathan Abarbanel: Have you always had confidence that Susannah would earn a place in the standard repertory?
Carlisle Floyd: I never gave it a great deal of thought. The Met being what it was for so long, I didn't have any aspirations about a performance there. When they decided to schedule Susannah for the Met, I said...and I did not mean it insultingly...'Well, it confers museum status at least.'" All I meant is that I cannot think of another American opera that's been done at the Met after that many years of circulating.
JA: Does the success of Susannah make it easier to approach Lyric Opera and the Met about your other works?
CF: Oh, no! They're thoroughly aware of what I've written. That would be not particularly graceful of me. It's the kind of thing I couldn't do. Bill Mason ( Lyric Opera general director ) has mentioned Of Mice and Men, and I know that James Levine ( Met artistic director ) has talked about it. So they're aware of the operas. But as to marketing them, it's up to the publishers.
JA: You always write your own words, or libretto ( Italian for book ) . Why?
CF: I began because librettists are always in short supply, and in Florida back in the mid-'50ss, they were non-existent. But mostly it's because I had a pretty extensive background in creative writing. All during my college career I wrote as well as studied music, so it didn't seem like that big a stretch for me. Once I started, I stayed with it 'til people started asking me in mid-career whether I would consider a collaboration. I said I really didn't think I would, I think I'd be far too cranky. I felt I'd be spending a lot of time instructing a writer in this particular regimen of libretto writing, which is a very separate discipline from playwrting or writing a novel.
JA: Why do you think, traditionally in the history of opera, there are so many bad libretti around? Do composers have wonderful musical sense but no dramatic sense?
CF: It's a thorny question but a good one. My feeling is that composers who are real theater composers know exactly what to feed on in a libretto, even if it's poor. The dramatic moments that invite music. Where I think composers fall down is in taste, in literary taste. I can't say that about most composers in the 20th Century, but you certainly can about previous composers.
JA: Right, I'm thinking about 19th Century operas with glorious music and silly plots.
CF: The thing we have to remember is that they were not silly at the time. It's very difficult for us to put ourselves in the frame of mind of 1830s romanticism. But I think the 20th Century and the 21st Century so far, is very much more akin in aesthetic and dramatic taste to the 18th Century. I feel the Mozart operas have held up beautifully, because they are, basically, quite real in our terms.
JA: You must mean the operas with libretti by Lorenzo Da Ponte. I think Da Ponte was the exception that proves the rule.
CF: Absolutely.
JA: With its cautions against hearsay suspicions, moral hypocrisy, and conformity Susannah famously was written as a statement against the evils of McCarthyism, which peaked in 1954. Besides Susannah, are any of your other works intended as political statements?
CF: No, and actually Susannah was not either. It just happened to coincide with the McCarthy period, and who knows what affects us subliminally? Anyone who lived through that period couldn't have been unaffected, certainly if you were in the academic or political areas. I'd seen Arthur Miller's The Crucible, which had come out the year before Susannah, and I was tremendously impressed by the power of it. But the principal thing that attracted me to Susannah was the subject matter itself. I though it had wonderful capacity for dramatic treatment.
JA: Susannah is still appropriate. It's messages about hypocrisy, and judging the social outsider, are as pertinent today as 45 years ago.
CF: Absolutely, unfortunately that's the case. They're no less timely than they were then.
JA: In 40 years, we've seen the growth of integration in the United States, we've seen emerging movements such as Gay Rights, we've seen post-Vietnam Southeast Asian immigrants, we are seeing right now an emerging American Islamic community. We're constantly challenged to integrate new groups of outsiders into our society. Susannah seems to speak perfectly to all these situations.
CF: That certainly was my intention, because I feel pretty passionately about that ... . A plea for compassion for the outsider.
JA: The music of Susannah incorporates folk-like idioms in its melodies and orchestral color. Not real folk songs, but folkloric. Are your other scores similarly folkloric, using the flavor of traditional forms?
CF: Not so much. More in my most recent operas than anything since Susannah, though Willie Stark has quite a bit of it. The quickest way to establish locale is to create folk-like sounds. The music just propels us to a certain area of the country. But Susannah, Willie Stark and Cold Sassy Tree ( Floyd's most recent opera ) have used more folk-like material than the other ones. All operas need to establish the color of a particular place.
JA: Most of your operas have American historical settings. Do you consider yourself a historian, or a student of American history?
CF: I'm a student of all history. That sounded pompous, didn't it? It's one of my great passions, I love history ... . I did a lot of research for The Passion of Jonathan Wade, set in the South after the Civil War. I redid it in 1991, and finally got it right at least for my own taste. It's a very large scale opera, something I wish Lyric Opera would do, 'cause it's not for smaller companies.
JA: I think the general public never considers smaller or larger opera companies.
CF: You're right, and there's probably no reason why they should, but it's certainly something I talk about with composers. You have to consider the size of the orchestra and of the chorus, not to mention the rehearsal time necessary to prepare the score. Jonathan Wade has a chorus of 105. It's a double chorus, and one of them has to be black, so it has very special and particular demands, and also a large cast of principals.
JA: Do you also specify the size of the orchestra?
CF: Yes. I've used the same size orchestra throughout my career, which is a medium-sized orchestra around 60 or 65. You don't get that many normally. But if you score for that, it probably can be done with down to 40.
JA: What do you say to a student who says, I want to be an opera composer today?
CF: The best thing I can do is to acquaint them of the difficulties and vagaries of the profession, because it's a very capricious profession. There's hope in the sense that opportunities are available which haven't been for a long time, companies' willingness to do new operas. We know that no company ever got a black eye for doing a new opera. The opera may have gotten a black eye, but the company always is lauded for having done it. It's a very good way to make a company conspicuous. That kind of thing is heartening, but at the same time it's not the rule. But it is a cordial atmosphere towards new works on the part of companies, general directors and boards. The audiences are much more easily won over than the boards of directors, frankly.
JA: What about works such as Sondheim's Sweeney Todd and Kurt Weill's Street Scene being done at opera houses? Works of musical theatre?
CF: Yeah, why not? This will sound like complete snobbery, but I would like it to be restricted towards musicals that have really professional scores. I can't see the pop or rock idiom going into that, but there are a number of young composers now trying to do that crossover. Adam Guettel has that ambition, Michael John LaChiusa. As long as they can provide a score that can withstand professional scrutiny, why not? Sweeny Todd is a terrific piece. The more inclusive we can be the better.
