SFO Susannah

Brandon Jovanovich as Sam Polk comforts Patricia Racette in the title role of Carlisle Floyd’s “Susannah” at San Francisco Opera. Photo: Cory Weaver

It was an affecting sight to see the 88-year-old Carlisle Floyd take the stage of the War Memorial Opera House Tuesday night to an uproarious ovation following the performance of his Susannah at San Francisco Opera.

2015 will mark the 50th anniversary of Floyd’s opera, a pioneering work that, more than any other, showed that an opera by an American composer on an American theme, can stand with the finest European works in the genre. (Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess was still in its long performance twilight from which it has only emerged in the last decade.) Sadly, this milestone anniversary is otherwise being ignored by domestic opera companies, so all credit to SFO for giving Susannah its belated company premiere.

San Francisco Opera’s production is not perfect in all respects, but offers a striking and powerful performance of Floyd’s tale of the innocent Tennessee girl in the 1930s destroyed by small-town intolerance and religious hypocrisy.

Visually, the new production was virtually faultless. Erhard Rom’s sets create a stylized naturalism, with dry, gray clapboard walls evoking the rustic milieu of the poor Tennessee town, enhanced by projections of its green hills and valleys. A towering cross, later seen in empty outline and with glowing light, serves as a silent sentinel, a stark visual for the abuse of religion that leads to Susannah’s tragedy. Gary Marder’s lighting was exemplary and director Michael Cavanagh moved the action gracefully and naturally. Oddly, for a new production, SFO didn’t create new costumes, relying instead on Michael Yeargan’s decades-old wardrobe from a Susannah production that served as Renee Fleming’s Lyric Opera of Chicago debut.

At 49, Patricia Racette is undeniably a bit mature for the role of the naive 18-year-old girl who is destroyed by the religious hypocrisy of the Reverend Blitch and ostracized by the petty small-minded citizens of her valley town. Yet the soprano is such a convincing and resourceful actress that she made us believe in her Susannah. Racette brought a wistful fragile wonder to “Ain’t it a pretty night” and a pensive sense of folkish meditation to “The trees on the mountains.” She also made Susannah’s pain at her rejection, resigned capitulation to Blitch, and eventual renewed strength genuine and moving, as the forever damaged yet defiant figure of the final scene. A rock star with local audiences. Racette revived a prolonged ovation in this, her 25th anniversary year with the San Francisco company.

Raymond Aceto was dramatically credible as the Reverend Blitch, a religious leader who preaches salvation while using his position as a mask for sexual preying upon the innocent. Whereas such a role is so easily and frequently caricatured today, Floyd invested Blitch with a depth and surprising humanity, and Aceto effectively conveyed the conflicted and self-loathing nature of the preacher, a man aware of his human frailty but unable to conquer his sensual nature.

Vocally, however, Aceto was a disappointment and the clear weak link in this production. His middle-weight bass proved far too light an instrument for the role and lacked the necessary dramatic power and weight to make Blitch’s sermon register in the revival scene. Aceto even had to be slightly amplified in his spoken preaching, which still made for a light-in-the-loafers villain.

Brandon Jovanovich was ideal in every way, vocally and dramatically, as Sam, Susannah’s hard-drinking yet loving brother. The versatile American tenor brought a convincing accent to his portrayal, great relish to his “Jaybird song,” and convincing fury at Blitch’s seduction of his sister in Act 2. James Kryshak was equally effective as Susannah’s addled friend Little Bat, delivering a twitchy, neurotic characterization.

Catherine Cook was a properly odious figure as Mrs. McLean, the leader of the jealous harridans determined to persecute the young and pretty Susannah. Dale Travis, Timothy Mix, A.J. Glueckert and Joel Sorenson were a vivid and well-contrasted group of Elders. Under the direction of Ian Robertson, the SFO Chorus brought full-blooded fervor to the church revival and final scene.

Conductor Karen Kamensek made a mostly worthy SFO debut. There were moments of miscoordination between the singers and the pit early in the evening and voices were fitfully buried under the orchestra at climaxes. But Kamensek pointed the dramatic moments with sumptuous impact and consistently underlined the folk-like lyric beauty of Carlisle Floyd’s score.

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Opera review: 'Susannah' a marvel too often overlooked

By Joshua Kosman Published 6:34 pm PDT, Sunday, September 7, 2014













Patricia Racette brings out the dimensions of the Susannah Polk role in an opera that's performed  too rarely by major companies - Carlisle Floyd's biblical tale set in rural Tennessee. Photo: Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera

Photo: Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera

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Patricia Racette brings out the dimensions of the Susannah Polk role in an opera that's performed too rarely by major companies - Carlisle Floyd's biblical tale set in rural Tennessee.

Religious hypocrisy, to our great sorrow, doesn't change very dramatically over the millennia. The same themes that run through the ancient tales - lust for power, fear of female sexuality, the malleability of crowds - can be seen in any mega-church today, and they inform Carlisle Floyd's potent 1955 opera "Susannah," which arrived at the War Memorial Opera House on Saturday night draped in glory.





This bleak and brilliant production marked the first time any of Floyd's operas have been offered as part of the San Francisco Opera's regular season, and the only possible response was, "What on Earth has taken so long?" The composer's first mature opera, and still his best known, is a small marvel of ferocity and compassion, and Saturday's performance - with the indomitable soprano Patricia Racette in the title role - made a superb case for it.





To call "Susannah" small is a testament to its scale and efficiency rather than its emotional impact. Floyd's piece runs scarcely over two hours, but it packs enough moral indignation and theatrical fervor for a piece twice its length.



Darker treatment



In writing his own libretto, Floyd drew on the story of Susanna and the Elders from the biblical Apocrypha, about a young woman who bathes naked under the unsuspected gaze of two creepy old lechers (Thomas Hart Benton's evocative painting of the scene, which hangs in the de Young Museum, adorns the cover of the Opera's program book).



Yet that story is only the seed of Floyd's opera, which is set amid the square dances and revival meetings of rural Tennessee. His treatment is far darker and more troubling, and his plainspoken libretto and tuneful, evocative score set up the essential elements of the drama with just a few deft strokes.



These include the contrast between Susannah's free-spirited generosity and the pinched, judgmental demeanor of the townspeople (in place of the Bible's two elders, Floyd saddles poor Susannah with a gang of four). The relationship between Susannah and her brother Sam is delineated crisply, as is the fatal charisma and almost-but-not-quite thorough villainy of the itinerant preacher the Rev. Olin Blitch.



Complex vision

Opera lovers are apt to have encountered pieces of the opera before - Susannah's Act 1 aria "Ain't it a pretty night," with its ardent, arching vocal leaps, is a standard excerpt for sopranos, as is the beautiful folk song she sings to console herself in Act 2. Yet to hear this music in context is to understand those selections anew. The allure of Floyd's vocal writing is unmistakable, but it always serves to undergird a rich and complex moral vision.



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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 Walnut Creek's Festival Opera). And as Blitch, bass Raymond Aceto gave his finest San Francisco performance yet, a heady blend of vocal prowess and anguished moralism.



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 San Francisco as part of the old Spring Opera and Western Opera Theater offshoots, but never before as part of the regular season.



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.

SYNOPSIS

A dark twist on the apocryphal story of Susannah and the Elders, Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah is one of the most-performed American operas of all time. Susannah Polk, a wide-eyed and lovely young woman, lives a simple and happy life with her older brother Sam, who raised her. She finds herself viciously ostracized by her small Tennessee mountain village after a group of church elders discover her bathing nude in a secluded stream near her home. Though her intentions were entirely innocent, she is painted as a sinning seductress by the elders, in part to conceal their own lustful feelings, and the entire town turns against her. A visiting preacher, Reverend Olin Blitch, tries to force her into repentance to “save her soul,” but turns out to be far more of a devil than is shown in his evangelistic exterior: He rapes Susannah and discovers all too intimately her innocence. He begs her, and the Lord, for forgiveness, but is shot dead by Sam as revenge for violating his sister. The town descends on Susannah’s house to drive her out of town, but she stands her ground, laughing maniacally as she chases them off with a shotgun, leaving her starkly alone as the curtain falls.

Susannah runs through September 21 at San Francisco Opera. sfopera.com