It's amazing how fast generations lose sight of other generations. One of the first things the young composers who come to work with me say is that they want to write music people will like, instead of gaining their credentials by being rejected by the audience.

Of Mice and Men (after John Steinbeck) following a long gestation was heard at the Seattle Opera in 1970 in a staging by Corsaro. Later in 1958 Floyd's Wuthering Heights (after Emily Brontë) was premiered at the Santa Fe Opera with Curtin as the heroine. His first opera was Slow Dusk to his own libretto (as was to remain his custom) and was produced at Syracuse in 1949.

His best known opera Susannah (1955) is based on a story from the Apocrypha transferred to contemporary rural Tennessee and is set in a Southern dialect. The son of a Methodist minister he based many of his works on themes from the South. Carlisle Floyd (born June 11 1926 in Latta South Carolina) is an American opera composer.