In Act I, Scene 2 of Carlisle Floyd's Susannah (1955), the title heroine sings a hopeful and arresting entrance aria. Similar to Laurie Moss, who marveled in her entrance at “the world so wide,” eighteen-year-old Susannah Polk imagines the world “beyond them mountains.” Like Copland, Floyd relies on an ascending major-seventh motive, painting a picture of a young woman who has just reached the cusp of adulthood. The whole world, it seems, lies at Susannah's feet. Moments before the final curtain descends on the opera, Susannah sways in the yard outside her family's cabin, singing a very different kind of song. In a much lower voice, she pretends to seduce one of her former friends. When he finally reaches out to touch her, she slaps him across the face, sending him fleeing from her property.

At the end of Susannah, the title heroine reasserts her right to her body and voice, yet she is far from whole. She is clearly traumatized by the violence she has endured over the course of the opera. According to Floyd, she is an “inexorably lonely prisoner of a self-imposed exile.” One might say that Susannah resembles Baby Doe and Lizzie Borden, also imprisoned at the end of their operas. I think, however, that there is an important difference. Susannah's imprisonment brings no closure. As Susannah sings her final number, eerily reminiscent of the deadly conclusion to Richard Strauss’s Salome (1905), she troubles her opera's conclusion, seemingly compelling her audience to consider uncomfortable questions about the nature of opera, rape, and survival. Thus Susannah has the potential to illuminate, rather than gloss over, the longstanding tradition of violence against women in opera.

Sopranos have perhaps known this all along, for many have identified something special in this opera and in the title role. In September 2014, the San Francisco Opera mounted a new production of Susannah starring soprano Patricia Racette (b. 1965). Prior to the production's opening, Racette recalled that she had first sung the title role while in college. “Susannah is the only role I’ve ever paid to sing,” she declared dramatically in an interview for Opera News: