Did you know the second-most frequently performed American opera — right after Porgy and Bess — is Susannah? American opera’s low profile nevertheless means that Carlisle Floyd’s 1955 work is no Oklahoma or West Side Story, classics so ubiquitous they somehow creep into every child’s consciousness. With Susannah, all but the biggest opera buffs are coming in cold.
Set in a small Appalachian town, it’s the story of a young woman whose beauty threatens the pious church elders and their new preacher. They turn on her, and then the preacher preys on her. This being opera, a tragic ending is inevitable.
In its new staging at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Susannah feels like a smash hit. You feel it in the excitement in the audience, in the bravos shouted after the big arias and the energy at intermission. The frisson of excitement may be there from the moment theater goers walk into the Loretto-Hilton Center. The stage — with its fallen clapboard church and evocative backdrop of an Appalachian spring — immediately suggests something new, something brilliant.
The production doesn’t disappoint. It grabs you immediately, with paranoid notes seemingly ripped from a Bernard Herrmann score as the church’s stained-glass windows seem to burn ominously. That Hitchcockian vibe quickly gives way to the lush energy of Aaron Copland, but no matter — once tragedy has been foreshadowed, it lingers in the air. Something bad is coming, even as we see the village at a party, line dancing with red Solo cups in hand. (Despite the script’s mid-century milieu, this Susannah is set firmly in the present, or at least the pre-smartphone 1990s.)
That something bad — the gossipy judgments of townsfolk — is there before preacher Olin Blitch shows up, but his arrival ups the stakes. Played by William Guanbo Su in a sparkling, Elvis-style suit, Blitch uses his powerful bass to peddle an intoxicating snake oil. Ever wonder what would happen if you depicted an old-time religious revival using the power of opera? Susannah shows us, as Stage Director Patricia Racette pairs a full blast of voices with choreography that would be familiar to anyone who’s seen the frenzy of penitents “slain in the spirit” at a charismatic church. The loving attention to detail in this scene, from the kids watching wide-eyed in the pews to the physical drama of each sinner being healed, is opera at its best.
And how about that set? Yes, Andrew Boyce’s set immediately promises something fresh, but as Susannah unfolds, it does more than that. Greg Emetaz’s brilliant video projections — also used to terrific effect in this season’s Tosca — and simply spectacular lighting by Eric Southern take us through the many moods in an Appalachian hillside, from misty spring to sensuous summer to bittersweet autumn in ways that are both stunning and evocative. The house where Susannah lives with her drunk brother (an impressive Frederick Ballentine) is depicted simply by a door and a lawn chair and tire swing, but coupled with those gorgeous projections and that changing light, it’s positively cinematic. Opera Theatre seldom has a bad set, but this might be the smartest I’ve ever seen.
Decades ago, Stage Director Racette herself played Susannah — one of the acclaimed diva’s first major roles in college, and a part she would reprise to terrific effect at the San Francisco Opera. In her hands, Susannah feels both deft and modern, an exploration of how religion is twisted by small-town jealousies and an evocation of the difficulty of being a young woman in a world with a perpetual virgin/whore complex. It’s a triumphant production of a new American classic, one that we all really ought to know as well as Oklahoma. The uninitiated would be wise to remedy that here, and now.
Music and libretto by Carlisle Floyd. Directed by Patricia Racette. Presented at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis at the Loretto-Hilton Center(120 Edgar Road, 314-961-0644, experienceopera.org) through June 24. Showtimes vary. Tickets are $15 to $142.
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