Commissioned by the Central City Opera in 1978 and produced there each year since its premiere in '78; also produced annually at the Utah Opera Festival in Logan Utah; it is constantly in production by various American opera companies and universities, and has also been produced in the Netherlands, Scotland, and Germany. Available on New World Records (formerly a CRI recording.)

The opera tells two tales, separated in time but parallel in characters and theme. In present day Central City, CO, Isabel, a member of the opera chorus, and her friend Larry visit the Teller House bar. Larry orders champagne and asks about the face painted on the floor. Tom, the bartender, tells the story, which is enacted as he becomes a 19th century bartender named John, who welcomes the bargirl Madeline (played by Isabel) as they toast to the future.

A disheveled traveler, Matt (played by Larry), enters and orders drinks for all while Madeline is asked to sing. Unable to pay for the drinks, Matt offers instead to paint a portrait on the barroom floor of the only woman he ever loved. John discovers the portrait is of Madeline. The two men fight until Madeline throws herself between them, with tragic consequences. Larry, now back in the twentieth century, laughs drunkenly at the old legend and forces Isabel to dance with him. Tom now reveals his past romantic relationship with Isabel, and challenges Larry. Events in the past repeat themselves in the present, continuing the legend of the face on the barroom floor.

John S. Bowman has had a career as an editor and writer on a wide range of subjects. Like many of his generation , he came to opera by way of the Saturday afternoon broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera. He co-translated his first opera libretto for the Lowell House Music Society at Harvard and went on to co-translate one libretto and translate/adapt another for operas he produced for Special Services while serving in the US Army in Germany. (He has described this experience in his recently published, Pergolesi in the Pentagon, available on Amazon Books and Kindle.) After being introduced to Henry Mollicone in 1969, he wrote the libretto for Mollicone’s first opera, Young Goodman Brown, based on Hawthorne’s story. When Mollicone was commissioned in 1977 to write an opera for the Central City Opera in Colorado, he again turned to Bowman, who came up with an original libretto for The Face on the Barroom Floor—only loosely inspired by that 19 th-century poem. And when the San Francisco Opera commissioned Mollicone in 1981 to compose an opera based on some local subject, Bowman devised a libretto based on San Francisco’s legendary 19 th-century eccentric, Emperor Norton.