Search - Jerry Hadley, Carlisle Floyd, Orchestre de l'Opéra de Lyon :: Floyd: Susannah (complete opera)

"Susannah" Today

Victor Bascara | USA | 03/26/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Last season's production of Carlisle Floyd's "Susannah" at the Metropolitan Opera, while generally well-received, was deemed a bit too small for the grand Opera House at Lincoln Center. After all, "Susannah" did have its New York premiere 44 years ago at the more humble New York State Theater in a production by the New York City Opera, with the late great Norman Treigle creating the role of Olin Blitch. Kent Nagano's Virgin Classics recording of Floyd's most famous work shows us that, despite pronouncements to the contrary, English may indeed be a viable language for opera. Musically and narratively speaking, "Susannah" is indeed the stuff of opera. Operas have long disregarded linguistic accuracy, with Spanish cigar workers singing in French in "Carmen" and 49ers singing to one another in Italian in "La Fanciulla Del West." This is opera, not The History Channel.But when you set an opera in the U.S. and sing it in English, the standards of realism - that oh-so beloved school of American literature - come into play. Opera and realism are quite antithetical. "Susannah" even sets the opera in a dialect-speaking region and has the characters sing in that (imagined) dialect of American English. Realism and its related offshoot, regionalism, are shoehorned into opera, or perhaps opera into realism.So what happens when realism and opera are joined? Both the resonances and dissonances of the operatic and the real are made manifest. And they are manifested brilliantly in Nagano's dramatically grandiose and rather intelligent rendition of "Susannah."Whether the lives of Appalachian folk can satisfy Met audiences' taste for lavish sets remains more in doubt. Operas are spectacles, with deliciously overdone sets and exquisitely huge human voices. These circus-like features are what make opera opera. The New York City Opera recently produced a fine version of Floyd's other canonical opera, an adaptation of John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men." A necessary lack of opulence figured into that staging as well. To stage these narratives any other way would call to mind Joseph Conrad's image of "a dog in a parody of breeches and a feather hat," that is, dressing something up to be that which it is not, thereby particularizing both the upstart canine and his curious costuming.The Orchestre de l'Opera de Lyon and the principals are in solid form, making the most out of the necessary spareness of Floyd's composition with a big sound. Perhaps a recording is the best way to enjoy "Susannah." You can just picture it in your mind's eye to be anything from a grittily realist Mike Leigh film to a psychedelic Busby Berkeley fantasy extravaganza.An older live recording from New Orleans featuring some of the original cast members has been released. As one would expect, the sound quality is not as lush as the Nagano version. But it too is a worthwhile addition to one's opera collection, showing us that opera is an oddly viable medium, perhaps because of its dangerous flirtation with obscene extravagance. The 1950s emergence of Floyd's opera can in that recording be heard more as a fascinating document of post-war American culture's paranoia and the inevitable self-scrutiny it engenders. Much of this is due to Norman Treigle's brilliant performance as Olin Blitch, a fine example the simmering yet-unacknowledged repression so emblematic of Cold War culture. "Susannah" is not out of place beside the psychodramas of HUAC darling Elia Kazan and other achievements of method acting. You could almost imagine a young Marlon Brando, or better still, Burt Lancaster in Elmer Gantry-mode, as Blitch in a dramatic version of the story.As an interpretation for our era, Nagano's version satisfies our millennial desire for the hyper-real, for what we imagine and wish a sensational and digitally-enhanced Appalachia would sound like. The violated innocence of Cheryl Studer's Susannah is relatively timeless. But the ambivalent guilt that Samuel Ramey conveys in his interpretation of Blitch makes us feel more keenly how jaded and voyeuristic we may have become. For we are contented to pay less attention to the quaint allegory's message and more to the medium's ability to delight and distract. And that, as we all know by now, is the message."

A classical Aristotlean tragedy--brought low by its tragic f

M. Wakefield | 11/21/2006

(3 out of 5 stars)

"I am torn in the number of stars to assign (as I am torn in many things) as the merit of the recording varies so sharply among its constituent parts. Much of the opera is superb and merits a five, but the recording's tragic flaw--as such a quality destroyed Oedipus and Lear--is so difficult to surmount that the overall rating must as a consequence suffer.

I am, however, getting ahead of myself. Let's start with the superb--the composition itself. A cunning little American gem, resounding nicely of the Bible, stereotypical Appalachian America, and of course the much vaunted McCarthyistic elements of the piece. ("Susannah," after all, criticizes the witch hunts for communists and subversives in the 1950s just as much as Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" does.) The piece is cohesive to say the least and seems initially simple (in its reliance on Quaker hymns, square dances, Appalachian ballads, etc.), but such simplicity is deceptive. In actuality, the musical syntax of the pieces is dense and contrapuntal--intriguing for what the weave of "Americana" says about the piece as much as it is aurally delightful.

The piece is compelling in its own right, but especially in this recording for the guiding genius of conductor Kent Nagano. On the whole, the opera has an almost instoppable forward push that never feels rushed--just insistent and beyond the audience's ability to stop (as the plot and thematic elements are similarly unstoppable). Nagano handles it gracefully and warmly; I am a fan of Nagano's on general principle, but feel that this recording of "Susannah" is one of his better pieces. Under Nagano's direction, the chorus is tight and balanced, the requisite tension exists between singers and orchestra... the prayer meeting scene is just thrilling.

Of course, the success of the prayer meeting scene--while reliant on the conductor and the orchestra/chorus cannot succeed without its Blitch. Samuel Ramey is fantastic in near everything I've either heard or seen of him, and "Susannah" is no exception. He is to me the ideal Blitch--tortured, self-righteous, penitant, consumed by the force of his own vision. He isn't the most evil man here; Ramey portays him as a human being. (A sometimes misguided human being, a sometimes admirable human being who desires to better himself...) On the whole, the character is not flat.

That said, Ramey is nearly the only singer for whom I have a word of praise. (The one exception is Jerry Hadley--singing the role of Sam in truly fine voice, if at times muddled in diction and certainly stridently over the top with his dialect. It's painful sometimes, though less so than in other singers.) The casting is truly the tragic flaw that makes this recording of "Susannah" not only a tragedy of plot but a tragedy of production. What would have been a superb recording is in my opinion utterly destroyed by the title character, Susannah (sung by Cheryl Studer). As the title character is so truly awful, I cannot give what might otherwise had a 4+ or a five anything more than a 3 rating.

What are Ms. Studer's problems? The most immediate is the dialect, which may arguably not be her fault but nonetheless detracts from the overall quality of the opera. Susannah is transformed from a sympathetic tragic character to a characterized backwoods hick--which for me is a truly tragic perversion of the text. It's perfectly doable to suggest at the appropriate accent (and thus convey the flavor of the piece) without bludgeoning the audience with it. In Ms. Studer's case, the dialect interferes with her pitch and renders many of her notes truly ugly. (I use that word sparingly on general principle, but I must use it here.) Now, Susannah is a character that could conceivably have some steel--though I have seen sweeter Susannahs pull of the role admirably as the character is supposed to be an innocent--but in this case, the production could have used a little less of the steel. Studer is altogether too forceful at times and as a consequent sacrifices both pitch and the innocence of her character. Yes, Susannah does want to see "what's beyond them mountains," but not to the extent that she loses the natural beauty of character that renders her such an object of jealousy and lust. Perhaps if Studer were just forceful (and did not have the accent) or sang on pitch and more aesthetically (but had the accent), I would find her more tolerable, but in all I was disappointed that this (and only one other recording) are the only options available of this gem. (Studer isn't all bad, incidentally--there are moments that I like her in, but on the whole I am not a fan.)



In any event, I happen to like this opera, so I am not sorry I purchased it--despite deficiencies in the title role. It's cohesively conducted, frequently sublime, and truly dramatic and stirring. I only wish its principle character had been recast so that the entirety of the recording were not brought low.



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