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'Susannah' Is A Classic American Tale Of Small-Town Persecution

West Michigan Opera Project

Carlisle Floyd's 1955 opera Susannah is a timeless story with a Biblical origin of our darker tendency to persecute the weak. As Sarah Faasse of the West Michigan Opera Project and Kalamazoo Philharmonia conductor Andrew Koehler tell it, the opera was composed during the McCarthy "Red Scare" era by a professor of piano who drew upon his own small-town memories and the mountain music of Appalachia to write an unforgettable opera filled with characters we can identify with easily today.

This collaboration between the West Michigan Opera Project and the Kalamazoo Philharmonia, eighteen months in the making, will be performed in two cities: on Nov 3 in Grand Rapids at Fountain St. Church, and Nov 10 at Kalamazoo College's Dalton Theatre. 

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Cara Lieurance is the local host of NPR's All Things Considered on 1021 WMUK and covers local arts & culture on Let's Hear It on 89.9 Classical WMUK weekday mornings at 10 - 11 am.
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