Dicapo in the News

Opera Now
Review of Susannah

JULY/AUGUST 2006 Opera Now

Painted lady
Susannah Floyd DICAPO OPERA NEW YORK

The Dicapo Opera's 50th anniversary production of Carlisle Floyd's iconic American opera Susannah, directed by Michael Capasso, the company's general director and co-founder, did full justice to this touching work. This opera can make its mark in the 4,000-seat Metropoli¬tan Opera House, but the intimacy of the 204-seat Dicapo Opera Theatre made the trauma of poor Susannah, scapegoated by her suspicious neighbors, even more poignant and immediate.

Designer John Farrell's simple flat sets, which looked like planks nailed together and slid swiftly on and off the stage, evoked trees, Susannah's tumbledown farmhouse, and the local church. Angela Huff put all the characters except Susannah in drab black and white churchy clothes. This Tennessee valley was a gloomy place, brightened only by Susan Roth's lighting, and by Susannah herself, as played by the comely and ebullient blond soprano Laura Pederson. No wonder the Elders were disturbed when she dropped her towel to bathe in the stream (upstage behind a scrim) and bared all. Anything that pretty had to be bad, and this production sharply emphasized Susannah's isolation from the community.

Capasso's precise direction was especially effective in the crowd scenes: both the first scene, in which the charming square-dance (choreographed by Francine Harman) is punctuated with the poisonous gossip of the Elders' wives, and the church picnic, when the townspeople finally have an excuse to actively shun Susannah, were sharply drawn. As the Reverend Olin Blitch, Matthew Lau wound up the revival meeting scene and turned it into a riveting tour de force of mass hysteria and obsession with sin. Capasso also stressed Susannah's destruction as she goes from cheerful innocence to all-consuming bitterness. He takes that change to its logical, if unconventional con¬clusion: after chasing the villagers off her property with a gun, Susannah lures Little Bat to kiss her - and then shoots him dead.

Laura Pederson's attractive, slightly hard-edged soprano worked better with Susannah's determination than with her vulnerability, but she acted well. Bass Matthew Lau has a good-sized sound and an especially compelling stage presence. Robert Hoyt (Little Bat) and Coke Morgan (Sam) ably rounded out the cast of prin¬cipals; mezzo Janara Kellerman turned in an ear-catching cameo as the poison-tongued Mrs. McLean. Steven Osgood led the 26-member orchestra with verve and skill.

HEIDI WALESON

JULY/AUGUST 2006 Opera Now

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