Of Mice and Men - the Opera

The Economist takes a look at a staging of the Carlisle Floyd-created production.

From the piece...

For Mr Beresford, it was odd that no modern American opera had ever been performed in Australia, despite the strong cultural ties between the two countries. He persuaded Opera Australia, the country’s main company, to take on both productions. Audiences have enthusiastically endorsed his judgment. On the opening night of “Of Mice and Men”, a standing ovation greeted Mr Floyd when he came on stage. Now 85, the American composer expressed delight that his opera had finally found Australian audiences more than four decades after its premiere in Seattle.

The timing does seem right to revisit Steinbeck’s Depression-era story. It follows two migrant labourers, George and Lennie, who must rely on each other in the harsh environment of rural California. Mr Beresford first heard the opera when he was directing “Cold Sassy Tree”, a later work of Mr Floyd’s, for the Houston Grand Opera. He was struck by the strength and poignancy of a duet in the second act between Lennie and the story’s one (unnamed) female character as they relate their respective dreams: he to find his own farm with George, she to find fame in Hollywood. Both dreams are palpably doomed. “It knocked me out,” says Mr Beresford to The Economist. “I knew then that I must take this opera to Australia, even for that duet alone.”

With carefully judged moods, Mr Floyd’s music brings the story to life. His musical composition matches the tautness of the novel, and what he calls its “almost total lack of diffuseness”. The Sydney production is also distinguished by stage settings that give an unmistakable sense of time and place.