Susannah is an opera based on the apocryphal tale of Susanna and the Elders. The opera version keeps the premise that a young girl is falsely accused by religious assholes, but in the second half it goes pretty far afield from the original.
And good, because while I liked the first half, I loved the second. That’s because the second half contains a wonderful scene set at a church meeting, and if you’ve been to a church meeting, you know the manipulation and the overwhelming music and the crescendo of emotion. It was all there. And the singing was remarkable — there’s a part with a hymn, and the hymn starts with a trill. (I know there’s a opera name for it. It’s like a glissando on the piano.) Anyway, I was admiring the trill, and then I realized the entire chorus was singing the hymn, and thus singing the trill as if they were one voice. It was remarkable.
It is disheartening to add another opera to the list of operas in which women are taken advantage of, but, trigger warning, someone is taken advantage of. At least she doesn’t respond by falling in love with the man (Rigoletto, Turandot).
The only other things that put me off about Susannah were that some of the incidental music sounded like a Max Steiner movie score, plus there’s a Chekov’s shotgun at the end (because you really want someone to die).
The title role at the Opera Theater of Saint Louis is played by Janai Brugger. I tell you, I would get excited when her arias would start and she did not disappoint.
Just one more opera to go: Cosi Fan Tutti. Peacock feathers in my biggest wig for that one.