Discovery in Manhattan

Who ever heard of a 30-year-old composer from South Carolina named Carlisle Floyd? The Manhattan premiere of his Susannah seemed chancy, even though the opera was based on the titillating apocryphal story of Susanna and the Elders. And so first-nighters stayed away from the New York City Opera in droves --and missed the discovery of a composer who promises to become the new GianCarlo Menotti.

Susannah proved to be a relentless but gripping tragedy of man's inhumanity to man. The scene is New Hope Valley, Tenn.; the time, today. An evangelist arrives in town with the intention of saving a passel of souls. Town elders go into the woods to find a suitable baptismal stream, are suddenly thunderstruck to see Susannah bathing in the altogether. This vision is enough to convince them that the girl is possessed of the devil, and that it is everybody's duty to cleanse her of sin.

The remainder of the action takes poor Susannah on a descending spiral through rejection by the townsfolk, false betrayal by the local idiot, seduction by the evan gelist himself, humiliation by the congre gation, and the eventual murder (by her brother) of her seducer. The grim tale ends on an ambiguous note with Susannah laughing hysterically.

As composer, Floyd has a Verdian flair for extracting the last drops of dramatic juice from many of his scenes. In the revival meeting, Susannah's dramatic pin nacle, the congregation sings a realis tic back-country hymn while Evangelist Blitch (Bass-Baritone Norman Treigle) rants in the foreground, and the music gradually transmutes and builds to shat tering climax. On the other hand Composer Floyd is sometimes seduced from the true path by his own melodies, nota bly when he sets Susannah (Soprano Phyllis Curtin) to singing the intermina ble verses of a pretty, folk-song-like lament just when she should be in the depths of despair.

As the son of a Methodist minister and a pianist, Composer Floyd comes by his text (which he wrote in ten days) and score almost by inheritance. And Susan nah powerfully points his moral : that the U.S. "Puritan" heritage has condi tioned us to suspect anyone who is a little different, to equate nonconformity with wrongdoing and evil." More important, it also proved him able to fashion vocal music that is eminently singable -- and listenable. The recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship this year, Floyd plans to spend it composing and writing. Director Erich Leinsdorf, who deserves credit for a fine discovery, can almost surely count on a full house at the New York City Center for Floyd's next work.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.