Nostalgic ‘Cold Sassy Tree’ Blunts Tale’s Harder Edges

Opera, for the American composer, is seldom a laughing matter. Big-ticket new opera is rare enough in this country that most of it is very serious. Lately, literary drama (“A Streetcar Named Desire,” “The Great Gatsby,” “McTeague,” “A View From the Bridge,” “The House of Usher,” “Moby Dick”) has been source material. So has bio-tragedy (Marilyn Monroe, Leon Klinghoffer, Harvey Milk, John Ruskin, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Nicole Simpson) been the rage. The few contemporary American comic exceptions have been unusual trickster works by senior composers writing first operas (John Cage’s “Europeras 1 & 2” and Elliott Carter’s “What Next?”) or wily postmodern fantasy (John Corigliano’s “The Ghosts of Versailles”).

But now Carlisle Floyd, American opera’s leading melodramatist, has, at 73, broken his tragic chain with a folksy comedy of sorts, “Cold Sassy Tree,” given its premiere Friday night by Houston Grand Opera in its Wortham Theater, and a co-commission by San Diego Opera (as well as Austin Lyric Opera, Opera Carolina and Baltimore Opera). It is the 25th world premiere for Houston, the one major American company for which commitment to its country and times is a normal condition, and its fourth Floyd premiere.

“Cold Sassy Tree” is proudly nostalgic and makes no pretense to high literature. It is based upon Olive Ann Burns’ 1984 best-selling novel, an affectionate portrait of turn-of-the-century life in small-town Georgia. Most of the characters have double names, such as Will Tweedy; they eat endless amounts of fried chicken and pie; they consider the reading of newspapers on Sunday sacrilege; and they speak in dialect as thick as gravy (“Gosh a-mighty! If’n I’d a-knowed y’all had made up a party for us, we’d a-got here sooner”). Cold Sassy is a town, named for a shaded grove of sarasparilla trees.

The South is Floyd’s world; he is a native South Carolinian, and has spent his career teaching in Florida and Houston. His most famous opera, “Susannah,” transfers the biblical story of Susanna and the Elders to the Tennessee mountains in the 1950s. He believes that American opera should sound like American opera--harmonies are simple and direct, tunes are tunes, emotions are elemental and explosive, bad guys are not ambiguous, vocal lines are easy to sing, production requirements will not break the bank. Floyd proudly writes people’s opera.

Burns’ novel suits Floyd. It is highly episodic and its town and times charm as much as its characters. But the composer has expertly fashioned a libretto that focuses directly on the dramatic situation of the three main characters. The narrator, Will Tweedy, recalls his life as a 14-year-old and what happened when his 59-year-old grandpa, Ruckert Lattimore, married a beautiful, busty 35-year-old milliner, Love Simpson, three weeks after the death of Will Tweedy’s grandma.

Ruckert is a stubborn and stingy but, of course, lovable old coot who flauts convention and always gets his way. Miss Love, as she is called by all, including her husband, is “damaged goods,” having been sexually abused by a neighbor when she was 9. She is also an outsider from Baltimore. The marriage is one of convenience. Ruckert, who owns the town’s general store, needs someone to cook and clean for him and decides marriage is cheaper than hiring a “colored” woman. They have separate bedrooms. She is willed the house and furniture. The town is scandalized.

Curiously, Floyd demonstrates little gift for local color, amusing situations or dialect, and the occasional hints of the Copland-esque West are blandly derivative. His talent instead reveals itself in clear, explanatory narrative, skillful ensembles and tear-jerker arias. It is a long opera (well over three hours with two intermissions) that is laid out as conventionally as a television movie. Will Tweedy introduces each act with spoken narrative over music, and only there does much of his accent come through. The music, in long swaths of declamation, tends to flatten language, and Floyd only really seems engaged when emotions are ripe, when sentiment can be wrung. The composer loves depicting a good ravishment (as he showed in “Susannah”), and his most affecting aria is Love’s confession of hers to Ruckert.

The opera ends as tragedy, poorly disguised as comedy. Ruckert is shot and killed by bandits holding up his store. Floyd, again, comes into his own with drawn-out dying music. By now he and Love really have fallen in love, and she is pregnant with his child. The town weeps for this remarkable man, realizing that Love had taught an old dog new tricks, and celebrates his life.

The production by Bruce Beresford is by-the-book, and thus something very different than his version of “Rigoletto,” updated to cynical Hollywood at the Los Angeles Opera last month. Sets by Michael Yeargan look just like the cardboard Southern small town they are meant to portray. The acting by a talented and large young cast is natural and plain.

For this opera to work, Ruckert needs a near Falstaffian charisma. But Floyd’s all-purpose music doesn’t particularly distinguish him, and bass-baritone Dean Peterson seems like a modest young man acting an old one. Patricia Racette, however, is transfixing as Love. The young American soprano is on the rise, and although her character is too little developed, she has gleaming music to sing and does so with alluring sparkle. John McVeigh dashes about effectively as Will Tweedy.

The many small parts and complicated ensembles seemed expertly handled. Patrick Summers, the company’s new music director, led everything with conviction.

The opera is guaranteed productions by its four other commissioners, and perhaps Floyd, who has been known to ruthlessly rewrite his work, will whittle this down to something more comic and biting.

“Cold Sassy Tree,” runs through May 6 in the Wortham Theater’s Brown Theater, 1-800-828-ARTS or www.houstongrandopera.org.