About the work
Susannah is an opera in two acts by the American composer Carlisle Floyd, who also wrote the libretto. He composed it while teaching piano at Florida State University, where it premiered on 24 February 1955, with Phyllis Curtin in the title role under the musical direction of Karl Kuersteiner.
Plot
The plot relocates the apocryphal story of Susanna and the Elders to a mountain village in Tennessee: church elders spy on the young Susannah Polk bathing naked, take it as proof of immorality, and cast her out of the community. The itinerant preacher Olin Blitch then sexually assaults her; when her brother Sam kills him for it, Susannah is left alone, abandoned by the town.
Cultural significance
Written during the McCarthy era, the opera also reads as a parable about slander and the pressure to conform within a small community. In 1956 it won the New York Music Critics' Circle Award for best new opera and represented the United States at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair. With its 1999 Metropolitan Opera debut (starring Renée Fleming) and countless further productions, Susannah ranks among the most performed American operas after Porgy and Bess.