Floyd: Cold Sassy
Tree
Racette, M. Lloyd, McVeugh, D.. Peterson
Houston
Grand Opera Orchestra and Chorus
Patrick Summers (conductor)
Albany
Records
GRADE: A
One could find plenty of reasons to criticize Carlisle Floyd's opera
Cold Sassy Tree, which had its world premiere at Houston Grand Opera in
April 2000. The bucolic setting more closely resembles Mayberry than any real
small town in the South, and the music is conservative to the point of being
reactionary — Floyd lives and writes in a world undisturbed by
Schoenberg on the one hand or Glass on the other.
One could also find plenty to criticize in Madama Butterfly or Carmen; like those two operatic masterpieces, Cold Sassy Tree is full of lively, lovable characters, memorable tunes and magnificent dramatic sequences; besides, it just plain works on the stage — and on record, as demonstrated in the release of a two-disc set of the Houston production.
Based on Olive Ann Burns's coming-of-age novel set in an isolated town in Georgia in 1900, Cold Sassy Tree lovingly examines the humor and grandeur of human life in simple terms of family, community and romantic love.
Composer Floyd, whose play-writing training consisted solely of a keen observation of human behavior but who always writes his own librettos, scored his first hit almost half a century ago with the classic Susannah , in which he explored betrayal and embitterment in a rural hamlet — and achieved two of the greatest moments of the lyric stage, Susannah's aria "Ain't It a Pretty Night?" and the invitation hymn scene.
In Cold Sassy Tree , Floyd is less cutting and pessimistic; still, he creates, along with a series of subtle, warm vignettes, at least one epochally grand moment: the final scene of Act I. Here, the old Protestant hymn "Blest Be the Tie That Binds" serves as an ironic backdrop for a portrait of cruel small-town ostracism, with soprano soaring upward in passionate modulations. But Floyd, with an unmatchable knack for the operatic craft, doesn't stop here; with the musical and dramatic tension pulled tight, he moves on to a towering credo of simple values and love of life, "I've Give You Eyes t'See th'World."
Cold Sassy Tree remains dramatically and musically convincing five years after its premiere, and the passion and skill of the original performers come across magnificently in this recording. Bass-baritone Dean Peterson is winningly crotchety, amorous and ultimately prophetic as the old man Rucker Lattimore, whose end is not so much a tragedy as an affirmation; soprano Patricia Racette is as beautiful vocally as she was visually in the role of Love Simpson, a wounded but brave woman who finally wins the hearts of the whole town. Tenor John McVeigh as the young Will Tweedy, the narrator and observer of the whole story, imbues his role with vocal beauty, while conductor Patrick Summers proclaims the bold colors and unabashed melodicism of the score winningly.
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