The plot of this modern American opera Susannah comes from the Biblical story of Susannah and the Elders, as adapted by Carlisle Floyd.
Here, Susannah is an innocent, pretty nineteen-year-old who has been raised by her brother in Hayes Valley, Tennessee. Early in the opera, when an itinerant preacher, Reverend Olin Blitch, comes to town, it sets her to musing about what it would be like to leave her home in Hayes Valley and to travel. She looks into the night sky and sings this aria, a calm moment and a calm beginning to what will turn out to be a tumultuous sequence of events.
Although Carlisle Floyd has written roughly a half dozen operas, "Susannah" is the one that has been the most performed and is the best known of his output.
