“Ain’t it a Pretty Night?”. Well, last Tuesday was certainly a great day, when the Inbox pinged, delivering a version of that best-known same name aria from American composer Carlisle Floyd’s gutsy opera about social conflict in America’s rural deep south, Susannah.
My resourceful New York collaborator, Wexford Opera Factory, schooled soprano, Katie Norchi, had sent her very own, hot-from-the-studio recording. If you want to blow your socks off, listen here, then hit the “Like” button and “Share”.
“The Bells, the Bells”, not of Quasimodo’s Notre Dame, but Wexford Festival Opera memories past, clanged insistently. Carlisle Floyd. Who the hell was he again? Hadn’t I seen his Of Mice and Men, based on John Steinbeck’s novella at Wexford in…Opera diary check. Good God! 1980.
I vaguely recalled that President George W Bush, in a rare moment of cultural clarity, had awarded The National Medal of Arts to Floyd in Houston, Texas. “For giving American opera its national voice in a series of contemporary classics rooted in American themes. Carlisle Floyd is the most important American opera composer and librettist in our nation’s history,” according to the citation.
Sidelined and patronised by north-eastern critics, largely because Floyd stuck resolutely to his southern roots, stayed home and refused to worship at their temples, it is perhaps fitting that an adoptive southerner, George W, similarly sneered at by establishment cognoscenti, chose to recognise him.
I immediately embarked on an all-consuming, immersive voyage of discovery. My conclusion? Carlisle Floyd is the founding father of American opera, the first US composer to let go of the coattails of Europe, and boldly strike out for native shores, his libretti rooted in the harsh realities of southern American life, creating a sound world heavily influenced by traditional folk melody.
Think Aaron Copland’s familiar ballet Appalachian Spring. One of three. He wrote only one opera, The Tender Land, not well known. The hoedown sound oozes rural America. As it does in Floyd’s opus, too.
Prior to Floyd, it had been the famous Italian composer, Giacomo Puccini, who had swept all before him with “the” very first American opera – El fanciulla del West – in 1910, about life in a gold rush California mining town.
But Puccini’s was a fantasy world, dreamt up in Italy. In which hardened mining roughnecks sat down meekly at desks with their jotters, cowed by a fresh-faced schoolmistress, trading their Polka saloon bawdy for classroom prim and proper. Really? Great opera. Shame about the facts.
In Susannah, written in 1955 at the height of Macarthyist intolerance, Floyd delivered the true grit hypocrisy-laced story of New Hope Valley, Tennessee. Awaiting the arrival of a new preacher – they seem to run through preachers pretty quick in New Hope – Olin Blitch, the outwardly devout menfolk are ogling 19-year-old Susannah Polk, an attractive naïf.
The wives, especially a bitchy Mrs Mclean – “She’s a shameless girl she is” – take a dim view when the fire and brimstone, “You’re all doomed, hand over them tithes”, Blitch lectures them, then dances with Susannah.
After the dance, Susannah is talking on her porch to Little Bat, a young boy, her platonic friend. She points to the stars wondering what it would be like to leave the hometown and travel beyond the mountains. The aria Ain’t it a Pretty Night? frames the moment perfectly. Still, introspective, lyrical, peppered with unsettling dissonances heralding future trouble.
Susannah has a brother, Sam, a loner who keeps their larder stocked with shot critters but is too fond of the grog. He returns home and Susannah goes to bed.
The next morning comes the simple, but pivotal Biblical “Susannah and the Elders” scene which changes everything. Forever. Susannah is bathing innocently, naked in the creek, as is her wont, when the elders of the church turn up looking for a suitable spot for baptisms. Blitch is a hyper soul cleanser.
Shock horror, “Is that gal naked?”. They hang around, simply in the interests of making sure, of course, then march off self-righteously to denounce Susannah to the community. “We wis truly shocked”.
When Susannah arrives at a church picnic, she finds Mrs McLean has arranged the serving of a large portion of cold shoulder. Little Bat tells her she has been betrayed by the oglers. He has been forced to confess – wrongly – that his relationship with Susannah is carnal.
Sam is philosophical, “It’s about the way people is made, I reckon.” Susannah bursts into tears. He advises his sister she has to face down the townspeople at a prayer meeting. Blitch is ranting “Are you saved from sin” inducements to elicit a public confession, but at the last minute, she rejects the hypocrisy and flees.
Back home, on her own, she sings a sad, reflective folk song, “The trees on the mountain are cold and bare”. Blitch arrives, ostensibly to encourage her to repent, but clearly more interested in cynically seducing her, “I’m a lonely man, Susannah”. Beaten into submission, Susannah lets him lead her into the house – with foreseeable consequences.
Blitch, who now knows the stories about Little Bat were hogwash – he discovered mid in flagrante that Susannah was a virgin – tries to convince the McLean faction she is innocent. Nope!
Sam returns home drunk, finds out what is happening and goes to the creek where he interrupts Blitch mid-baptism by the straightforward device of shooting him, then heads for the hills.
The townspeople, deprived of their quarry, try to run Susannah out of town, but she has been broken. Transformed into a laughing gun-waving hell cat she sends them – and former friend, Little Bat – packing.
This is a narrative about neglected people, deplorables before Hilary Clinton invented the term. Rooted solidly in America. The action is fast moving, concise and punctuated by moments of beautiful musical reflection. Floyd wrote the libretto, so his shifts in key and sly use of occasional dissonances perfectly portray the evolving emotions of the characters.
As many critics dismiss Floyd as “simplistic”, I downloaded a version of “Ain’t it a Pretty Night” for piano and high voice to check for myself.
Blimey! Six flat key signature, so it’s written in G flat major. Hang on, it ain’t. The two opening bars are stuffed with naturals, so we are heading immediately towards E flat minor, which is where the singer firmly leads us in bars four and five, landing after only five notes on that high E flat.
Then there are tempo changes – 4/4 for the opening phrase, lengthening out into a more relaxed 6/4. And all within the opening 30 seconds of the aria. As soon as the ear becomes complacent Floyd jerks it awake with another key change or shift in tempo.
Harmonies are as dense as Tennessee forest undergrowth. Tightly packed eight note chords, to be played “stringendo”. Getting my head, never mind my fingers, round this is almost mission impossible. I am persisting. Simplistic? Floyd’s is music making at its unsettling, Leonard Bernstein best.
Of Mice and Men, written in 1970, is an even more explosive tale, of Depression-era dustbowl ranch hands searching for that illusion beyond every rainbow, the American Dream.
Two drifters, the wily George and simple-minded mostly gentle giant Lennie, find work at a ranch in the Salinas Valley, central coastal California. The pair dream of someday owning a farm, where Lennie can raise rabbits.
The opera opens as George discovers Lennie is caring for a dead mouse – which he has accidentally killed while petting it. Lennie has an unfortunate habit of killing the animals to which he is attached. A puppy follows the fate of the mouse.
Trouble is brewing thanks to the ranch owner, surly Curly’s flirtatious wife. She has been married to Curly for only two weeks but resents being ignored by her whip toting, ever-angry husband. It’s the ranch hosses wot is getting the oats, not her.
Seeking revenge, she visits the bunkhouse to flirt and provokes the guileless Lennie into making advances which quickly careen out of hand. When she tries to shout Lennie attempts to silence her but, forgetting his own strength, breaks her neck.
To prevent Curly’s lynch mob from torturing then stringing up his vulnerable pal, George is driven to shooting him. But only after Lennie has had the opportunity to reflect on his dream of the perfect farm and those pet rabbits.
Much performed by smaller opera groups, there is a fine version of Of Mice and Men by Livermore Valley Opera – appropriately, California-based – to be found here. Again, Floyd controlled both libretto and score and, I think, added colour, context and humanity to the Steinbeck tale. Which is the purpose of the operatic medium.
Since Floyd laid the foundations of American opera, others have built. John Adams, Philip Glass, Jake Heggie and Terence Blanchard come to mind. And on 23 September, New York’s Metropolitan Opera will open its season with the world premiere of American composer, Jeanine Tesori’s Grounded.
As topical as you can get. About the morality of drone warfare. “Jess is a hot-shot fighter pilot whose unplanned pregnancy takes her out of the cockpit and lands her in Las Vegas, operating a Reaper drone halfway around the world. As she struggles to adjust to this new way of doing battle, she fights to maintain her sanity, and her soul, as she is called to rain down death by remote control.”
Reaction’s critic will be hovering above the onstage action, aware that Tesori is the latest to write a chapter in the Great American Opera Book, introduction scripted courtesy of Carlisle Floyd. Ain’t it a pretty story?
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