Biography
Carlisle Floyd was born on 11 June 1926 in Latta, South Carolina, the son of a Methodist minister; his mother gave him his first piano lessons. He studied piano and composition at Syracuse University, where his first opera, Slow Dusk, was also premiered by the university's opera workshop in 1949. From 1947 he taught at Florida State University, where in 1955 he composed his best-known opera, Susannah, writing the libretto himself as he usually did. In 1976 he moved to the University of Houston as M. D. Anderson Professor and, together with David Gockley, founded the Houston Grand Opera Studio to train young singers. His other operas include Wuthering Heights (1958), Of Mice and Men (1970) and Cold Sassy Tree (2000). Floyd died on 30 September 2021 in Tallahassee, Florida, at the age of 95.
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