Getty: Usher House Lawrence Foster & Orquestra Gulbenkian

• 1 Act I - Prologue - During the whole of a dull, dark and soundless day (Poe) 01:24
• 2 Act I Scene 1 - Can it be five years my friend? (Roderick, Poe) 21:12
• 3 Act I Scene 1 - Where is my lady, o where is she gone? (Poe) 02:56
• 4 Act I Scene 1 - She was my model in writing (Poe, Roderick, Primus, Attendant) 04:08
• 5 Act I Scene 2 - Lady Heliane Usher (Attendant, Roderick, Poe) 07:17
• 6 Act I Scene 3 - And now it is time to bid our silent farewells (Roderick, Primus, Poe) 05:02
• 7 Act I Scene 4 - We are particularly honored to receive our guest (Primus, Poe) 08:49
• 8 Act I Scene 5 - Roderick, I must speak (Poe, Roderick, Madeline) 16:17
• Total Runtime 01:07:05

Info for Getty: Usher House

Poe's quintessential gothic tale serves as the loose basis for Getty's opera. As Mr. Getty explains, 'I found myself taking lib­erties. To start, I have made Poe himself the narrator who lives to tell the tale. More radi­cally, I have conceived him and the doomed siblings as types of an antebellum warmth and gallantry which hardly exist anywhere in the prose of the real Poe, and must be counter to his purposes here. I have added other gothic staples - forbidden knowledge, a Faustian pact, ghostly ancestors - and have shifted all into a tale of good and evil and redemption. Good means Poe and the siblings, evil means Primus and the ances­tors, and Madeline becomes the agent of redemption.'

Christian Elsner, tenor (Edgar Allan Poe)
Etienne Dupuis, baritone (Roderick Usher)
Phillip Ens, bass (Doctor Primus)
Lisa Delan, soprano (Madeline Usher)
Benedict Cumberbatch, actor (as the Attendant)
Orquestra Gulbenkian
Lawrence Foster, conductor

No biography found.

Booklet for Getty: Usher House