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St. Pete Opera’s 20th season to begin with ‘Susannah’
The 1955 American opera by Carlisle Floyd will be performed Oct. 17, 19 and 21.
St. Petersburg Opera Company, aka St. Pete Opera, opens its 20th season Friday with Susannah, composed – music and libretto – by South Carolina’s Carlisle Floyd in 1955.
Susannah is 70, but is still classified as a “modern opera,” meaning that it’s practically contemporary when placed alongside the grand operas of the 18th and 19th centuries, from the likes of Rossini, Wagner, Verdi and Puccini.
It’s sung in English, and as with Gershwin’s “folk opera” Porgy and Bess, the characters are Americans. Susannah is based on the Apocrypha story of Susanna and the Elders, from the Book of Daniel.
(The crux, in this interpretation: An 18-year-old woman in a small Tennessee valley town is accused of being “wanton” and therefore sinful, an instrument of the devil, and things go from bad to worse in a Knoxville minute.)
Matthew Cerillo is Little Bat McLean, with Jessica Sandidge as Susannah.
On Oct. 10, St. Pete Opera director Mark Sforzini introduced the story and characters of Susannah at one of his periodic “Mornings With the Maestro” events at the company’s Opera Central headquarters.
The entire cast of the upcoming SPO production was on hand to perform short sections of the music, with piano accompaniment. This took place as Sforzini explained the story, and pointed out the various musical motifs employed by Floyd – who was, at the time of the opera’s creation, part of the Florida State University piano faculty.
He pointed out where listeners should expect recurring themes, and how Floyd manipulates them for different moods.
Susannah, he explained, is written in the verismo style, meaning it has more to do with the trials and travails of everyday people, as opposed to the wealthy and the royal of earlier, romantic opera.
Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, said Sforzini, is a “great example” of verismo opera.
“The plot, the characters, the setting, everything is rooted in reality as much as possible,” he explained. “In Susannah, this is a poor community, so you’re not going to see brightly colored, lavish costumes that look like they just went over to Nordstrom’s and purchased them. These are poor people in rural Appalachia.
“Floyd has written the language, the dialect of the Deep South, into the score. So some things are going to sound a little different.”
John Robert Green and Sarah Heltzel, as Olin Blitch and Mrs. McLean.
Sforzini told his audience to listen out for words and phrases like cain’t, git, fergive, allers and summers around here. Susannah is ostracized after she is spotted, by the town’s (male) elders, bathing nekkid in the crik.
That, Sforzini said, “is the way these people sing: They plum fergot how normal English sounds.”
During the performances Oct. 17, 19 and 21 (opera companies traditionally take every other day off for voice rest), there will be supertitles projected above the Palladium Theater stage, as there would be if the opera were sung in Italian, French or any other non-English language.
Sforzini will conduct a full orchestra for the performances.
As always, the singers are world-class professionals, chosen through a rigorous New York audition process. Several will be familiar to SPO audiences, including John Robert Green (as double-dealing Reverend Olin Blitch) and Sarah Heltzel (as gossipy Mrs. McLean): They performed Fredrik and Desiree, respectively, in the company’s production of A Little Night Music in March.
The role of Susannah is sung by soprano Jessica Sandidge, who sang Violetta in an earlier SPO production of La Traviata, and is a member of the touring group Opera Cowgirls.
The stage director is Helena Binder; set design is by Steve Mitchell (with Mike Roland).
The “Mornings With the Maestro” events are purposely bare-bones, to provide a glimpse into the upcoming opera, its construction and themes. And to experience the singers in all their full-throated glory.
“We’re just giving you little snippets today,” Sforzini reminded the audience. “If you want the whole shebang, you’ve got to come to the opera.”
For Susannah details and tickets, visit this link.
