Carlisle Floyd: Forging a Path for American Opera
An Introduction by David Gockley
One of my life’s greatest gifts was to know Carlisle Floyd, both from the personal and professional perspectives.
When I first heard the two Susannah arias (“Ain’t It a Pretty Night” and “The Trees on the Mountain”) sung at the piano by my then-wife, soprano Patricia Wise, it made a huge impression on me— a 26-year-old operatic baritone who was in the process of transition from singing to administration. Such unabashed lyricism argued that there could be a viable alternative to the atonality and serialism that had hijacked the compositional style advanced by the academic establishment in the US and Europe. At the time, most “modern opera” (in my view, at least) simply kept the public away from the opera house in droves! Carlisle’s music, as I came to know it, was largely melodic and influenced by folk sources familiar to us all. It is “in our bones.” And his satires cut to the core of the American experience.
I had fortuitously landed a job as business manager of the Houston Grand Opera beginning in the summer of 1970, the year Carlisle’s Of Mice and Men premiered in Seattle to considerable acclaim. The following year, the Houston board appointed me their general director, and one of my first actions was to plan a trip to Cincinnati to attend Of Mice and Men. My ulterior motive was to introduce myself to the composer, who would be present at the old “Zoo Opera,” an amphitheater located in the Cincinnati Zoo, where the music was punctuated by the calls of exotic birds and the trumpeting of bull elephants. After the performance, I chased down the nattily dressed composer and blurted out that HGO wanted to commission an opera from him to commemorate the 1976 American bicentennial, to which he responded graciously while remaining non-committal.
“Carlisle’s music was largely melodic and influenced by folk sources familiar to us all. It is ‘in our bones.’”
Back in Houston, I pursued Carlisle’s publisher numbers of times, and within several weeks the commission was a done deal. The result would be Bilby’s Doll. By that time, I was convinced I wanted to make HGO the leading commissioner and producer of American opera, and guess who was going to be our poster boy!
Right off the bat, we scheduled Susannah for the summer of 1972 and Of Mice and Men for March ‘73, during which time Bilby’s Doll, a Gothic tale about a young girl unjustly accused of witchcraft, was being composed. Bilby’s Doll divided critics along the lines that would haunt the composer and us over the years: the New York School vs. Everybody Else. Bill Blender of TIME magazine wrote that too much of the action took place offstage, and Allen Hughes of the Times said it might be rescued by 45 minutes of cuts. Meanwhile Ann Holmes of the Houston Chronicle heralded it as a “triumphant addition to the repertoire.” The composer did make cuts for the subsequent performances in Omaha, where it was a big hit. Carlisle otherwise maintained his satisfaction with he opera, and it awaits a first-class revival.
Two other significant works preceded Of Mice and Men: Wuthering Heights (1958) in Santa Fe and The Passion of Jonathan Wade (1962) at New York City Opera. The former was recently issued on a recording by Milwaukee’s Florentine Opera to substantial acclaim.
“The Passion of Jonathan Wade’s powerful score, including larger than life choral numbers and touching arias, perfectly juxtaposes the intimate and the epic.”
HGO would commission a total revision of Wade in 1989 that I recall was a totally satisfying experience. Its powerful score, including larger than life choral numbers and touching arias, perfectly juxtaposes the intimate and the epic. It is Carlisle’s biggest piece.
When Carlisle was appointed to be the MD Anderson Chair Professor at the University of Houston, he moved to Houston from Tallahassee. Our friendship took a giant leap forward, with three-times-a-week “hard singles” tennis matches and countless dinners and lunches, one of which gave birth to the idea of the Houston Grand Opera Studio, conceived by us as a top-ranked young artist training program, drawing on resources of both of our institutions. Its alumni today comprise a “Who’s Who” list of prominent American operatic artists, including Eric Owens, Denyce Graves, Joyce DiDonato, Jamie Barton, and Ana Maria Martínez.
In 1980, Carlisle had another idea for an opera. He asked me what I thought of All the King’s Men, the 1946 novel by Robert Penn Warren, a semi-fictionalized story inspired by the life of the colorful Louisiana governor Huey P. Long, a character immortalized on film by Broderick Crawford. The idea led to the creation of Willie Stark— what a dream role for a baritone— and Timothy Nolen made the most of it. The opening night audience sprang to its feet at the Kennedy Center a couple of months later. Director Hal Prince created a vivid production that is etched on my mind to this day.
Our final collaboration was Carlisle’s only full-scale comic opera, Cold Sassy Tree, a hilarious adaptation of the Olive Ann Burns novel that centers on the May-September romance involving the boisterous septuagenarian Rucker Lattimore (premiered by Dean Peterson) and the much younger Miss Love Simpson, a role for Patricia Racette. It brims with delightfully colorful characters and enough down-home humor to keep you rolling in the aisles.
Carlisle’s final opera, Prince of Players, was premiered in Houston when he was 90 years old, a miracle that can be heard of Florentine Opera’s premiere recording, which was nominated for two 2021 GRAMMY awards: Best Contemporary Classical Composition and Best Opera Recording.
I personally hope the American Opera Establishment— not to forget the world’s— will rally around its composer laureate in 2026-2027. Susannah and Of Mice and Men will surely receive their due. It’s the others that should be widely showcased in the manner they deserve. They are among the greatest treasures of our culture.
— David Gockley was the general director of
Houston Grand Opera from 1972 to 2005, and
of San Francisco Opera from 2006 to 2016.