All-American Operas

Perhaps best known now for his associations with the music of Wagner, immigrant conductor Walter Damrosch was also an opera composer in his own right, and predating the Met's ignomious decision, his compositions included the 1896 The Scarlet Letter, based on the story by Hawthorne. Hawthorne crops up again as the man behind Howard Hanson's Merry Mount, a four-act Puritans-and-Indians opera staged by the Met in 1934, and drawn from the writer's admittedly now-obscure story, The Maypole of Merry Mount.

Despite non-contemporary American composers' tiltings toward folk material for determinedly nationalistic operas, Mark Twain doesn't seem to have had much impact in operatic circles, with the notable exception of Lukas Foss' 1950 The Jumping Frog of Calveras County. Another folk opera worth mentioning is Douglas Moore's 1939 The Devil and Daniel Webster, derived from a story by Stephen Vincent Benét (a wonderful writer whose works are all but forgotten; at least Mark Twain is still a household name!); and one would also need to class with "Americana" William Schuman's 1953 The Mighty Casey, based upon Thayer's poem Casey at the Bat.

Some post-WW II composers -- American and also British -- have turned quite deliberately to American classics for their inspiration. US-born Henry James, for instance, was the author responsible for Benjamin Britten's 1954 Turn of the Screw and 1971 Owen Wingrave; Douglas Moore's 1961 The Wings of the Dove; Thomas Pasatieri's 1976 Washington Square; Dominick Argento's 1988 The Aspern Papers, commissioned by Dallas Opera; and Thea Musgrave's 1974 The Voice of Ariadne, based upon James' The Last of the Valerii. Edith Wharton hasn't had anywhere near that operatic popularity, although one should perhaps mention Stephen Paulus' 1999 Summer, based on her novella of the same name. In 1998, the Opera Studio of Houston Grand Opera premiered Mark Adamo's Little Women, of Louisa May Alcott fame. Edgar Allen Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher has inspired an opera by Philip Glass, of all people (1988). I'm still waiting, though, for any opera of significance to surface, derived from O. Henry...another forgotten master of the short story.

Carlisle Floyd began composing upon American literary works decades ago and, bless him, hasn't stopped yet. His 1970 John Steinbeck-based Of Mice and Men was commissioned by the San Francisco Opera; in 1981, Willie Stark -- drawn from Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men --

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