Living at the Opera

Arizona Opera ended its 2006/07 season with a tightly-knit, well-tuned presentation of Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah, his best known opera that has enjoyed numerous productions since its New York City Opera debut in 1956. The work is based on the Biblical account of Susannah and her Elders from the Book of Daniel, as it appears in certain Bibles. From that account we learn the Elders, who steadfastly lust after Susannah, spy on her while she is bathing and soon realize that the young beauty will never give in to their lascivious advances, so they accuse her of fornicating with a young man. This charge is eventually proven false, and Susannah is saved from death. Floyd, using a librettist’s poetic license, simplified the storyline by relocating the bathing Susannah to an isolated community called New Hope Valley in the Appalachian Mountains of Tennessee. There, she is observed by her own church Elders who are repelled by her audacity to bath in a small stream which is supposed to be used for baptism.

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