Carlisle Floyd

• Known as the “Father of American Opera,” Carlisle Floyd created a distinctively American idiom for opera, drawing on national folk and religious music traditions
• His music theatre works combine penetrating social commentary with acute psychological insight
• Wrote his own librettos, in which he treated such themes as the aftermath of the Civil War, the Great Depression, and rural fundamentalism
• Susannah, his best-known opera, has entered the permanent repertory with numerous productions in the US and a growing number in Europe

Works by Carlisle Floyd include:
Susannah (1953–54) musical drama in two acts
Of Mice and Men (1969) opera in three acts, six scenes
The Passion of Jonathan Wade (1962, rev.1989) musical drama in three acts

"With a commitment that rivals Smetana's in Bohemia or Britten's in Britain, [Floyd] has striven to create a national repertory … He has learned the international language of successful opera in order to speak it in his own accents and to enrich it with the musical and vernacular idioms of his own country." — Andrew Porter, The New Yorker