When Carlisle Floyd returned to the Aspen Music Festival and School in 1954 for a follow-up summer of piano studies, he had a second mission: Find singers who might want to appear in the premiere of his first full-length opera.
The unknown 28-year-old composer heard from a friend about soprano Phyllis Curtin, who had recently joined the festival’s faculty, and he worked up the courage to ask if she might be willing to give the work a hearing.
“I simply called her and introduced myself and expected a stall or a put-off, you know, because I was certainly nobody she knew,” Floyd said from his home in Tallahassee, Fla. “She said, ‘I would love to see it. Come over this afternoon.’ I was taken aback, but very pleasantly.”
Floyd played through parts of the vocal score and outlined the story, and Curtin was immediately taken with the work. She contacted baritone Mack Harrell, one of the festival’s founding artists, and he was enthusiastic as well.
“It was really that easy,” Floyd said. “And when I think about it in retrospect, it seems astonishing to me that anything that was that momentous in my life was really that easily accomplished.”
The two noted singers agreed to appear in the 1955 premiere at Florida State University, where Floyd had begun teaching in 1947, and Curtin helped secure a pivotal production of the work a year later at the New York City Opera.
The opera? “Susannah,” an adaptation of the biblical story of Susannah and the elders set in the 1950s in rural Tennessee. Fittingly, the score is flavored with folklike tunes, hymns and square-dance music.
Since its heady debut in New York, the work has gone on to become one of the most celebrated American operas of all time. It is performed regularly abroad and ranks as the third most produced American opera since 1991 by Opera America’s professional member companies.
As part of a summer season of three offerings, Central City Opera is reviving its 1997 production. This new version opens at 8 p.m. Saturday, with 12 additional performances through Aug. 10.
Floyd, 82, creator of 11 operas in all, including his other well-known work, “Of Mice and Men,” ranks among the most significant opera composers in American music history. That distinction has earned him a place among the four inaugural recipients of the National Endowment for the Arts’ Opera Honors, a newly established set of awards to be bestowed in October.
When Floyd got the call informing him he was a winner, along with such notables as conductor James Levine and soprano Leontyne Price, he was shocked.
“I was stunned, because immediately you think of all the deserving people in your category, but, of course, very honored and certainly pleased,” the composer said.
Piano was the South Carolina native’s chief musical interest during undergraduate and graduate studies at Syracuse University, and at Aspen, where he first went in 1952 to study with Czech-born virtuoso Rudolf Firkusny.
But the 1956 success of “Susannah” permanently derailed his piano career and set him on a five-decade path of opera composition, writing both the music and librettos for all his pieces.
“My gift, such as it is, is really for writing music for the theater,” Floyd said. “I spent a great deal of my time during my college career in creative writing, so the idea of writing my own libretti seemed no stretch at all for me.
“I think it was a matter of combining words and music with drama in the theater. I’ve done other works not for the musical theater, but my interest has continued to lie there.”
Of all his operas, the one that Floyd believes has been most unfairly neglected is “Bilby’s Doll.” It has been performed only twice — first at the Houston Grand Opera in 1976 and a year later at Opera Omaha.
The work is based on New Eng- land historian Esther Forbes’ novella, “A Mirror of Witches,” which takes the form of a fictitious cleric’s diary during the Salem witch trials.
Floyd has completed a second revision of the opera, and he hopes some company will give it another chance.
“It’s not going to be a popular work like ‘Susannah’ or ‘Of Mice and Men’ or even ‘Willie Stark,’ because of its rather exotic subject matter, but, nevertheless, I have a very strong personal attachment to it,” he said.
Why some operas succeed and others fade into obscurity continues to baffle the composer.
“You send them into the world and you have absolutely no idea what’s going to happen to them,” Floyd said. “It’s just as much a mystery to me the ones that succeed, perhaps in a way, as the ones that don’t succeed as well in finding an audience. And, of course, luck plays a great part in it, too — where it’s produced, where it’s seen, who sees it.”
Because of the proliferation of opera companies in the past half century and their increasing desire to commission new works, Floyd said, it is easy to forget now how challenging it was to get a new work produced in the 1950s.
While he dared to hope “Susannah” might receive a New York premiere, it never occurred to him to wish for the kind of sustained international success the piece has enjoyed.
“That’s the kind of thing,” he said, “given the circumstances of opera at the time, that I never could have hoped for, because we didn’t have the circuit of opera companies that we do now.
“But, of course, year after year, I’m thrilled that the opera continues to be scheduled and also to be received well.”
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com
“Susannah”
Opera. Central City Opera House, 124 Eureka St. Central City Opera revives its 1997 production of Carlisle Floyd’s modern adaptation of the biblical story of Susannah and the elders set in the rural South. Soprano Emily Pulley portrays the title character, and baritone Grant Youngblood takes the role of Olin Blitch. Hal France will conduct. 8 p.m. Saturday, with 12 additional performances through Aug. 10. $45-$93. 303-292-6700 or 800-851-8175 or .
