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Patrick Summers Talks About Carlisle
Floyd and American Opera

By Robert Wilder Blue

Conductor Patrick Summers has been a champion of American opera throughout his career. As Music Director at Houston Grand Opera and Principal Guest Conductor for San Francisco Opera, and a frequent guest conductor around the United States, he has conducted performances of numerous American works. Most recently, he led acclaimed world premiere performances of Andre Previn's A Streetcar Named Desire, Mark Adamo's Little Women and Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking. But, it is Carlisle Floyd to whom Summers has had one of his strongest connections.

Photo by George Hixson

"I have admired Carlisle my entire adult life. I believe that Susannah was the first full-length opera I ever saw, first in Cincinnati and then at Indiana University when I was very young, long before I was a student there. At that time, he had achieved 'mythical figure' status to me. When I was appointed music director in Houston, one of the very first projects I began to work on was HGO's commission of Cold Sassy Tree. I worked closely with Carlisle over the course of a number of years preparing it.

"That process is always fascinating -- conducting a composer's work and getting ideas right from his head -- because there is only so much in music you can write down. The interesting thing about Carlisle is that, for him, composing is a process of elimination. He has so many ideas; he is an absolute wealth of melodic invention. He told me that a full hour of Susannah was cut in the original production. Cold Sassy Tree could have been a Ring Cycle-length opera as far as Carlisle was concerned. He had the ability to focus on anything and the ideas were just endless. But, once we were into rehearsal, it was a process of paring it back to decide what story he was going to tell. In the end, there was not anything in Cold Sassy Tree that didn't need to be there.

"Carlisle always had a musical solution to any dramatic problem. In the original production, we had difficulty moving a particular set. I told him (as I had also had to tell Andre Previn in A Streetcar Named Desire), 'I hate to do this to you because we are in our final weeks, but we need 45 seconds of music here.' Someone who isn't involved in creating a piece might think that is terribly cold. How could you tell Verdi you needed 45 more seconds? But, in actuality, composers love the challenge. Carlisle went away overnight and came back with an orchestrated insert for the scene change that was exactly 45 seconds long, and it worked. It sounded absolutely organic. You would never be able to tell me where it was in the score if I didn't show you. Composers are the most gifted people in music.

"Carlisle is an incredible admirer of Verdi, which is something you can see in his sense of architecture. None of his music sounds like Verdi, certainly; Carlisle is too unique a voice to copy anybody. He writes the most American music around -- unashamedly and brilliantly. Cold Sassy Tree is an incredibly beautiful, funny and touching work. It is his Falstaff."

Carlisle Floyd's operas have been performed regularly around the United States, most notably in Houston, San Diego and at New York City Opera, as well as by many smaller regional opera companies. But until recently, they have not been presented in the larger international houses. "Carlisle's music has familiarity and acceptability, combined with an incredible ability to touch the common man, just as Aaron Copland's music did. Unfortunately, there is an inherent distrust of that among the music intelligentsia.

"For me, it takes the whole range of compositional process to properly illustrate who we are now as a country and as a society. The incredibly avant-garde and experimental is fantastic; it is necessary to present those pieces that push the limits of the art form and move us forward. But, it is just as valid to have these compositional voices that speak to who we are right now, in a simple, direct and honest way. Both styles are valid, and everything of quality in between them is valid. Each is important because of the existence of the other. Schoenberg was a much better composer because of the presence of Rachmaninoff in the world at the same time.

"Wozzeck is almost 80 years old and it sounds melodic to most musicians now. The average audience member perhaps still has a difficult time with Wozzeck; but, it falls much easier on the ear now than in the past or at its world premiere and is an undeniably staggering piece of musical theater. At the same time Wozzeck was written, there were other pieces that were easier for the audience -- that allowed them to absorb Wozzeck easier. Wozzeck wasn't the only thing. That is why I get very annoyed at those who think all new music and all new operas must be of the most avant-garde variety. Remember how Puccini was maligned when he wrote his early operas?

"It is this one-palette idea about new music, that you get a lot of in the press, that is very disconcerting, and it is diminishing to everyone who writes music. Let the whole palette of composers speak. There will be the very avant-garde and the forward-looking. And there will be the right-here-and-now -- the people who take existing musical elements and use them in a new and exciting way. To say that the only great modern opera will not be written in a musical language we have now mastered, as one critic said in response to Dead Man Walking, is a really amazing statement to me. It is like saying that the next great novel will not be written in a language you will understand. To say that it is not the idea and the skill with which a story is told or a musical composition is written, but the actual language itself, is really ridiculous and elitist beyond belief. When people go to the opera, I want them to have a delightful evening one time, and another, I want them to have their thoughts provoked, and another, to be challenged and perhaps not even like it very much.
"That is why I think Carlisle's operas are so great. Cold Sassy Tree is a brilliant score from beginning to end. Does it advance the art form? Someone has to properly define that for me in order for me to answer that question. Cold Sassy Tree is a deeply moving, funny piece. Anything that does that advances the art form."

In 1999, more than 40 years after its premiere, Floyd's most well-known opera, Susannah, made it to the Metropolitan Opera. "Susannah packs a wallop! However, I doubt that the Met would have programmed it without the efforts of Renée Fleming; it was important to her to sing an American opera at America's greatest opera house. And, as in Verdi's and Rossini's time, it often takes stars to plead the cases of these operas. It took Porgy and Bess nearly 50 years to get to the Metropolitan. The New York Times review of Susannah said that the whole thing would fit into the third act of Parsifal. Well, that is a catchy little phrase and we all remember it; but, what in the world does that have to do with the quality of Susannah? All of Bohème would fit into the last act of Die Meistersinger but that does not make either one a better piece. It doesn't have anything to do with it."

A common complaint about opera in English, whether written in English originally or translated from another language, is the inability to understand the words when they are being sung. Over the past decade or so, however, there have appeared many singers who are comfortable singing in English. "The 'understandability' of the text has more to do with the composer than the singer. In general, it is the way the text is set. It is difficult to be understood if two syllables of a word are an octave and a half apart, which happens a lot. If a composer writes that for effect it is one thing. Although, it diminishes the ability of the singer to be understood. It is a trade-off.
"You have to coach and coax singers to sing in American English since there is still a lot of cultural 'cringe' about it. Carlisle will tell you that, in the rehearsal process, a huge amount of time is spent on this. You cannot imagine how many singers do not want to sing the Appalachian dialect in Susannah. I have to tell singers constantly not to roll the 'r's.'" (He demonstrates: 'You'rrrrrrrrre rrrrrrright.') It sounds absolutely laughable. Finally though, now, there are American singers who are at the top of the field all over the world and who are much less ashamed of the American vernacular. They are capable of singing proudly in American English. But, it is hard work: once, I had a singer in a concert who insisted on singing 'Bess, you are my woman now.'

"Composers work very hard at text-setting. Cold Sassy Tree is a miracle in that regard -- the text setting is incredible. It has all of Carlisle's usual musical elements -- leaps and jumps; but, they are done in such a way that you can understand the text. Jake [Heggie] has written a lot of songs and has a natural ability to set English; he does it really well. Sometimes the different stresses of the text are important, though. The setting of the text of Nixon in China is exactly what gives it its punch. Carmen is absolutely filled, cover-to-cover, with words that are set opposite of their expected accents; any French speaker will tell you that. It was a 19th century sensibility that composers like John Adams have revived, thankfully.

"We live in a very literal age now; several generations have grown up on the movies and think that the movies are real. They see a movie about Nixon that fictionalizes aspects of his life and suddenly it is an affront to the memory of the man, instead of just a movie. It is a really incredible turn. In earlier centuries, it was not considered that a piece of theater had to be 'real.' Caesar's life certainly did not transpire as it did in the Shakespeare play. And what about those Donizetti operas that have queens of England meeting each other when they did not even live at the same time?!"

Speaking of Cold Sassy Tree, Carlisle Floyd said that after the cast was chosen, he did not meet them again until rehearsals started. "He does not write for singers, he writes for characters. There are varied aesthetics on that issue; Jake said many times that it greatly enhanced his compositional process to know who he was writing for. Andre undoubtedly was affected in his composition of Streetcar by being in love with Renée's voice; and, there is a place for that in the compositional process. But, Carlisle has always said that he does not write for particular voices, he writes for characters and the singer has to fit the character. Wagner certainly did that -- he did not write to show off particular talents. But, Mozart did, absolutely. He said he could write an aria to fit someone like a tailor fitting him for a coat. I always remember a story that Richard Rodgers told about offering Mary Martin the leading role in Oklahoma. After the success of Oklahoma, Rodgers sent Martin a dozen roses with a note thanking her for turning it down, saying, 'If you had taken it, I would have written a star part for you. Because you didn't, I just wrote the show.' It is an interesting point. Certainly in the Broadway sphere, star-vehicles have not lasted at all. Carlisle has a very important point there and I think he is right, possibly. Any singer you ask will disagree, of course."

So, what makes Cold Sassy Tree good? "It is honest. It does not try to be anything other than what it is, which is an incredibly original, moving, funny story of two people and a town a century ago. Carlisle tells it with absolute clarity and humor and sincerity. The end of the second act is so moving and beautiful, it struck everyone in the audience.

"All of the new pieces I have been involved with have been different. Tod Machover's, Resurrection, which we did in Houston in 1999, is an incredibly complex piece. It is in a musical language that is much more complex than anything written up to that point and it was a challenge for the audience. It is an incredibly important score and it is brilliant. Little Women, by Mark Adamo, which we also did in Houston, was a big success. It was honest, direct, moving and unique.

"These people who are composing for the theater now have an immense amount to say. And that is the way we honor this tradition of opera that we are a part of. We all love the same twenty operas that the public keeps wanting. That is the reason we are in this business. We all love Traviata, Bohème, Don Giovanni, Marriage of Figaro - they are some of the greatest works of art ever written. But, we only honor them properly by producing works of our own time that say who we are. If a larger percentage of time in opera houses were about new music, then La Bohème would not come around so often; it would be presented every ten years instead of every two years. Then, Bohème itself would be an event, as it should be. Bohème is a superb piece of music and a great night in the theater. Let us honor that tradition by giving our living composers the chance."

Will we ever arrive at a point when opera companies in the United States regularly present American operas? "Cold Sassy Tree was Houston Grand Opera's 25th premiere in as many years. We would be in a very different place in American opera today if ten theaters could say that, instead of just one, and that is the challenge I would like to throw out to other companies. I saw William Bolcom's brilliant A View From the Bridge in Chicago last season; it was an absolutely fantastic opera and it was performed wonderfully. The houses were sold out - they were scalping tickets. It was the same in San Francisco for Dead Man Walking.

"The tide is turning; it is allowing for a process. Learning to compose takes a long time and few get it right the first time. It was interesting that I was conducting Nabucco in Houston at the same time as Cold Sassy Tree.  Nabucco was Verdi's third opera but only his first success. His first two operas were dismal failures. Critics wrote, 'Do not ever write another note of music again. You do not have any talent.' Yet, he got a commission for Nabucco. Now how many impresarios today would commission a composer who had two failures? Without which we wouldn't have had Verdi! So, let there be a process."

Read more on Patrick Summers
 USOperaWeb interview - January 2002