Transcript of interview with Carlisle Floyd

Jo Reed: Now opera, in the United States, certainly has undergone changes between the times of Susannah and Cold Sassy Tree.

Carlisle Floyd: <laughs> To put it very mildly yes.

Jo Reed: <laughs> Can you talk about some of those changes?

Carlisle Floyd: Well, I think what's happened in opera over the last 30-40 years, but certainly the last 30 years, is in a way, and I use the word advisedly, phenomenal. But my career began in the mid-fifties. There were only three opera companies that could have launched a new opera. And the only one of those three that was even likely to do it was the New York City Opera, because the Metropolitan of course was strongly European in it's traditions. And the San Francisco opera was equally European.  . So there was simply no place for native opera at that time, except the New York City Opera. Now –a- days, I could probably name you 30 opera companies who have the necessary prestige to attract press. And national press, for new operas.   And I think a great deal of that growth has to do, frankly, with the introduction of super titles. And nothing certainly has ever demystified an art form any faster than that. A number of us had grave reservations initially, but were quickly won over because just seeing that the audiences followed it more intently and with greater involvement. So also, a new audience, not opera aficionados but a new, and I always felt a waiting audience, was attracted to the opera house and new opera companies certainly burgeoned all over the country, and so that we have now this very large non-traditional audience for opera, which is very, very exciting for me. Those are the people who come to opera with absolutely no pre-dispositions,. And I think the fact we are doing so many new operas now, every season, is very much attributable to the fact that those people, that audience, generally speaking may be leery of a new opera, but not nearly so as our traditional opera audience. And they're usually willing to give it a try, and if it's in their own language, and if it's dealing with issues and people that they recognize, I think all the better. I remember a woman coming up to me in Arizona, in Phoenix, after a production of Of Mice And Men, with this puzzled look on her face, at the after opera party, and she said to me, "Mr. Floyd" she said, "This is really real." <laughs> And, I was amused and also enormously complimented.