Phyllis Curtin, Norman Treigle

April 4 - 11, 1 9 9 6

**** Phyllis Curtin, Norman Treigle

CARLISLE FLOYD: SUSANNAH

(VAI)

This is a recording of such historical importance beyond the inherent value of the work itself that it should be required listening for anyone interested in opera. Any recording that features soprano Phyllis Curtin is automatically significant. For a singer of such extraordinary vocal and dramatic gifts, Curtin recorded relatively little. The title role here is the most famous part written for her, and this is even rarer: a live performance from the height of her career. She's in thrillingly intense voice -- a voice of searing conviction and exquisite delicacy -- as the Tennessee mountain girl whose native high spirits are willfully misread as promiscuity (the plot is an Americanization of the story from the Apocrypha of Susannah and the Elders, with elements of The Scarlet Letter and, alas, Somerset Maugham's Rain). She sings two of the rare contemporary arias that have entered the standard recital repertoire: "Ain't it a pretty night" and the still more folklike "The trees on the mountains." Curtin's sincerity makes even bits of recitative hair-raising.

The performance was presented in 1962 by the New Orleans Opera, seven years after the world premiere. The strong cast includes the also too-little-recorded bass Norman Treigle, who succeeds in making the hypocritical Reverend Blitch sympathetic. Tenor Richard Cassilly is outstanding as Susannah's brother. There's no libretto provided, but you can understand almost every word. Knud Andersson conducts with incisive dramatic strokes. (Floyd himself staged the production, which must account in part for its effectiveness.)

The opera is both melodic and melodramatic in the lineage of Puccini by way of Menotti. You wish it had a touch of Virgil Thomson's slyness to temper the relentless overstatement. At least Curtin and her colleagues give it the ring of truth.

-- Lloyd Schwartz