Nowhere is this clearer than in the climactic scene of Blitch's tent meeting, in which he exhorts the congregation first to cast out their own sins - and then to cast out the putative sinner in their midst. Over the roiling phrases of a communal hymn, Blitch unleashes a sermon that escalates in rhetorical force; it's easy to see through the doublespeak, but not so easy to deny its persuasive power.
All the musical and dramatic virtues of the score were splendidly addressed in Saturday's taut and expressive performance (with the company's welcome new 7:30 curtain time in place for all evening operas, "Susannah" gets patrons home in time for an early bedtime, or perhaps a nightcap). Debuting conductor Karen Kamensek led a sinewy account, drawing richly colored playing from the Opera Orchestra - especially during the work's foreboding prologue - and letting the speech-like rhythms of the score register lightly but firmly.
Director Michael Cavanagh's production moves the action back from the 1950s to the 1930s, with some WPA-style photographs to set the scene and a stark, splintery set by Erhard Rom to convey something of the townspeople's hardscrabble life.
Racette's impressive depiction of Susannah drew on the very qualities that have made so many of her performances here invaluable over the years - vocal clarity and robustness, emotional transparency, and especially the ability to blend tender lyricism and vigor into a single composite. Her account of "Ain't it a pretty night" had all the sweetness and lucidity it needed, as well as a surging impetuosity that hinted at Susannah's thwarted ambitions.
Brandon Jovanovich brought his exquisite, clarion tenor and theatrical appeal to the role of Sam, in a performance that conveyed both the fecklessness and inner strength of the character (local operagoers with longish memories may recall him singing this role in 2002 with
The rest of the cast was just as fine, with tenor James Kryshak making a vivid, sweet-toned company debut as Little Bat, the dim-witted teenager whose hormones keep him in Susannah's orbit, and company stalwarts Dale Travis and Catherine Cook as his parents, leaders in the town's bluenose brigade. Ian Robertson's Opera Chorus sang arrestingly as the townspeople.
Uphill climb
"Susannah" is by some reckonings the most widely performed American opera, but that status is sustained by smaller companies and college music departments; the piece still faces an inexplicably uphill climb when it comes to major companies. It has been done in
This staging - for which the 88-year-old composer was on hand on opening night to acknowledge the exuberant applause - owes something to Floyd's long friendship with General Director David Gockley, and it's a welcome end to an unjust drought.
But there
is more still to be done. Floyd's catalog includes other works of comparable
beauty and heft, including "Of Mice and Men," and the irresistible
"Cold Sassy Tree," which Gockley commissioned for the Houston Grand
Opera and premiered there in 2000. The current magnificent account of
"Susannah" only whets the appetite for more.
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