Carlisle Floyd

The composer of Cold Sassy Tree, Carlisle Floyd, has been called “the bard of the American South”. Born in Latta, South Carolina, in 1926, Floyd’s ancestors on his father’s side settled in Charleston in the 1600s. His mother’s people also arrived before the American Revolution.

Floyd had seen only two operas, Carmen and La bohéme, before he composed his own, Susannah, in 1956. Although he is now one of America’s foremost opera composers, he thinks most operas are silly and much prefers musical plays. His goal is to write operas which are “as absorbing and engrossing as plays”. For this reason, most of his operas are based on well-known literary works such as Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, and John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. Susannah was based on the biblical story of Susannah and the Elders. At the time of its New York première, this was described by Time magazine as “the most moving and impressive opera to have been written in America…since Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess”. His works have been more frequently performed on American stages than those of any other living composer except Gian Carlo Menotti (the composer of the popular Christmas opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors). He also composes other works such as an orchestral song cycle based on the poetry of Emily Dickinson, quite a career for someone who is not an opera buff!

In school, Floyd became editor of the school paper and a member of the basketball team. He earned degrees in piano and composition at Syracuse University in New York and began teaching at Florida State University where he remained until 1979, when he was named M.D. Anderson Professor at the University of Houston. There he co-founded the Houston Opera Studio, a training and performance program for young singers, similar to the San Diego Opera Ensemble.

When Floyd first started composing, American singers had to travel to Europe if they were to find employment. There were only three American opera houses so his works were sung by students and young singers. Now there are dozens of American opera houses and, not only do American stars sing his works, but European singers are also learning them. Other things have changed. He wrote Susannah in longhand and wrote each note on lined music paper for the performers. Now the notes are called “data” and entered into a computer producing instant printed scores for the performers.

Although Floyd is a “modern” composer, his music is very accessible, often drawing on American folk music for inspiration. He says, “Why should an audience take notice of a musical language that is totally alien to them, any more than if they were listening to human speech in a language they did not understand?” He writes his own libretti, reworking them frequently until he is satisfied. No wonder he wants the audience to understand all the words and really follow the story. Even though Cold Sassy Tree is being sung in English, supertitles will be used.

The musicologist, David Ewen, wrote of Floyd: “His operas…are compelling theatre, in which plot, stage action, characterization, diction and music are skillfully coordinated. He generates power in his music through half-spoken declamations that simulate inflections of speech but are regulated in pitch and rhythm, and [have] a strong and sometimes dissonant harmonic and polytonal language. But lyricism, emotion, and romantic feelings have not been sacrificed”.

Because of its episodic nature, he found Cold Sassy Tree difficult to write, but he really wanted to do it. He says that when his sister showed him the Olive Ann Burns novel, Cold Sassy Tree, it was like going home. “There were expressions in it I hadn’t heard since I was a child. The people in this novel were like people I knew.…That is why, when we were printing computer-generated performance scores for Houston, I couldn’t bring myself to call it data.”

Cold Sassy Tree is a joint production by five different companies, including San Diego Opera. It had its first production in Houston in April, 2000. The local production is the third. Reviews have been extravagant in their praise. Scott Cantrell in Opera News, said, “The best feature is the orchestral — writing lush, colorful and deftly mood-specific, veering between Copland and Bernstein”. Wes Blomster of Opera Now reported, “Tree has given American opera its true voice; here opera speaks with the authenticity heard in Copland’s music of the war years. It is an extraordinary achievement”. Mark Swed in the Los Angeles Times stated, “Carlisle Floyd believes that American opera should sound like American opera — harmonies are simple and direct, tunes are tunes, emotions are elemental and explosive, bad guys are not ambiguous”. European critics agree. J.L. Paulk of the German magazine Das Opernglas called it a “Masterwork”.