Opera Daily 🎶 — “The trees on the mountain” from Susannah
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Welcome to the Sunday edition of Opera Daily, the best opera community on the internet. If you’re reading this but haven’t subscribed yet, join over 3,958 smart, curious folks by subscribing here. 🎉
This week is all about 20th & 21st century opera.
If you missed the first post in this series where we covered Doctor Atomic by John Adams, you could find it here. In that post, I discussed a bit of my struggle with sharing some of the contemporary pieces (and continued the conversation with some readers in the comment section on that post). I shared how I often feel like modern pieces force me to work too hard. And that maybe that’s because I like my coffee black versus with milk and sugar? 🤷🏻♀️
While I didn’t mention it in my first post, I think it’s important to note that within the modern or contemporary opera category, pieces can look and feel very different for one another. Some say that anything goes for opera composers in the 21st century, leaving a lot of room for loving an opera and also not loving an opera (which is ok!).
In our last post, we stretched the rubber band and went all the way to 2005 (which is a far distance from the post before where we covered The Marriage of Figaro from 1786). For today, we are going to the mid-1950s, when the American composer Carlisle Floyd premiered his most well-known work: Susannah. Featuring Appalachian folk melodies mixed with Protestant hymns and some more traditional classical music elements, the opera officially premiered at Florida State University in 1955 (with a production at New York City Opera a year later with the title role sung by Phyllis Curtin).
We’re listening to Renée Fleming sing the title role in a studio recording of “The trees on the mountain” from Act II of Carlisle Floyd's 1955 opera, Susannah.
Susannah is a plainspoken opera, relying on southern dialect with the words and music working in perfect harmony as Floyd takes most of the musical rhythms from the natural inflections of speech.
🎧 Listen here (5 minute listen):
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Based on the biblical story “Susannah and the Elders,” the opera is set in an Evangelical community in rural Tennessee. Susannah is a young, hopeful 18-year-old girl who has inadvertently incited her church elders’ lust by doing nothing other than being herself. The wives of the church leaders are super jealous of her, say she is dangerous, and spread a rumor that she slept with one of the boys in the town.
In Act II, a preacher named Reverend Blitch tries to convince her to make a public confession to something she did not do, but she resists and runs away from the church (it turns out Blitch was also a monster). At home, she sings, “The trees on the mountains are cold and bare”. In the end, Susannah is free from the dangerous world she was living in, but it feels like it came at the expense of her innocence.
There is no way you can listen to this aria and not sense the dread that Susannah is feeling. It’s devastating but so beautiful.
The road up ahead lies lonely and far,
There’s darkness around me and not even a star
To show me the way or lighten my heart,
Come back my lover I fain would start.
Still interested? Want more?
Susannah is one of the most-performed American operas of all time.
Below is an interview with Carlisle Floyd. He talks about his influences as a composer and librettist well as Susannah’s beginnings (which he created with a particular audience in mind – the audience that didn't go to opera).
What did you think of this aria? Please share thoughts that come to mind in the comments, especially as you compare it to the first piece in the series. There are no wrong answers!
See you next week where we will be back to the Classical and Romantic periods with something lighter!
Thank you again for listening,
Michele
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Sometimes YouTube guides my listening choices. Today I opted for a production of "Susannah" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0npKoH3XCEI). Though not as polished as a Renée Fleming, Victoria Hill was credible in the starring role. I didn't always listen closely, but even when I didn't look or understand the vocals, I could feel the drama evolve through the music. Now I know where "The Trees On the Mountain" fits in. The music in the second act was far more interesting than the first as things build up to the climax. This opera can easily be adapted to cross-cultural contexts. The story of a community creating a Jezebel, on which to project its fears of a woman's independence (especially her sexual freedom), is as old as Adam and Eve. Singling out an individual, or a group, for marginalization or oppression is at the dark heart of racism, sexism, ageism and homophobia. By making The Other its witch or bogeyman, ways a community reinforces its identity while acting on its basest human impulses. Despite the tragedy which precipitated it, Susannah stood up for and defended herself. I wonder what a third act might have been. I'll have to write that one in my imagination.
Idle Mind Questions: Are opera and musical theater different? Is "Susannah" more of the latter than the former? Are there any American opera composers who enjoy the kind of respect European audiences have given to some of our famous singers? Finally, as I struggle with the definition and contours of the art form, is the beloved Christmas classic, "Amahl and the Night Visitors" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPAjNu4WW0I), a true opera if there's only one act? Okay, the real world is calling. Backatcha, bye!🙋♀️
"Emotional" is precisely how I felt this morning upon listening to "The trees on the mountain" from Carlisle Lloyd's "Susannah", performed here by Renée Fleming. The interview with Carlisle Lloyd. was a revelation. To think that the Florida State University - known for football, baseball, dance and circus programs - gave the world this composer and his world-famous opera - amazes me.
This evening I thought I'd listen to the excerpts from "Kat'a Kabanova" by Czech composer Leoš Janáček. I soon realized that these two operas have similar themes, in that both appear to be based on the tragic entanglements of female protagonists, trapped in societies where they have no free agency, are subject to oppressive constraints, and find that the only acceptable way to avoid shame and condemnation is through self-negation or self-destruction.
My initial response to today's aria was so emotional that I decided not to post it on this forum. These powerful reactions to Lloyd's and Janáček's operas caught me by surprise. I am officially, Ayten and Michele, an "emotional" wreck - but in a positive way.
P.S. Mr. Quinn, you led me to the beautiful "Sinfonietta".