(Photo: Daniel Tchetchik)

The University of Houston’s Moores Opera Center will present the Houston premieres of “Slow Dusk” and “Markheim,” a double-bill of one-act operas by Carlisle Floyd, as part of celebrations marking the centennial of the American composer’s birth.

Artistic Director Kathleen Smith Belcher directs the production, which stars soprano Ayanna Delk-Lewis and baritone Micah Zimmerman leading “Slow Dusk,” and bass Jamie Eagle and bass-baritone Wes Kelley sharing the title role in “Markheim.” Conductor Jorge Parodi, Music Director of the Moores Opera Center, leads both works.

“Born in the American South, Floyd created operas that speak plainly and sing deeply.  His works do not stand at a distance from their characters.  They sit beside them in the church pew.  They listen.  They ache. They forgive,” said Belcher, per an official press release.  “There is something beautifully fitting about honoring Floyd in Houston, a city whose artistic landscape he helped shape.  His influence resonates in rehearsal rooms, on main stages, and in classrooms where young singers are learning that opera can sound like home.”

“Slow Dusk,” Floyd’s first opera, is set in a small North Carolina town in the 1930s and follows a young woman whose secret courtship ignites community suspicion with tragic consequences. “Markheim,” his seventh opera, is a psychological thriller set on Christmas Eve, in which a desperate man confronts a mysterious stranger after a violent act upends his fate. Floyd wrote the libretto for both works himself, as he did for all his operas.

Floyd spent two decades as a professor at the University of Houston, and five of his operas premiered in the city — more than anywhere else.

The production runs April 16–19, 2026 at the Moores Opera House on the UH campus.