Argento's "Poe" at CCM

   It’s going to be a haunted weekend at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.
   Beginning at 8 p.m. tonight in Corbett Auditorium, CCM Opera presents "The Voyage of Edgar Allan Poe" by American composer Dominick Argento.
   Repeats are 8 p.m. Friday (the 13th), 8 p.m. Saturday and 2:30 p.m. Sunday at Corbett Auditorium.
   If that sounds spooky, it is.
   "We have a boat that is and isn’t, flashbacks, dream sequences and a trial," said Mark Gibson, director of orchestral activities at CCM, who will conduct.
   The 1976 opera, to be directed by CCM opera head Sandra Bernhard, is a "voyage of discovery" in which Poe boards a phantom ship, thinking it’s real. On board, he meets the ghosts of his life, including his wife, mother and foster mother (all dead), detective Dupin from "Murders in the Rue Morgue" and Rufus Griswold, the biographer who libeled Poe after his death.
   "There’ll be a lot of visual razzmatazz in the show, a lot of projections and scrims," said Gibson.
   Designer Paul Shortt described the set as "a skeletal abstraction suggesting on one hand, the tilted, askew lines of ships’ rigging and decks, and on the other, the disjointed state of Poe’s mind. A number of moving screens function as projection screens for video imagery from Poe’s past and his writings. The colors used are of fog and death, grays and blacks. The grays are ideal for projection."
   "I’ve done projections for almost every opera I’ve done here," said Bernhard. "Everybody has this cinematic sensibility now. ‘Poe’ will take that to the fantastical level."
   Gibson has known Argento since his undergraduate days at the University of Minnesota (Argento retired from the Minnesota faculty in 1997). "He judged my piano juries when I was a student at Minnesota. My second job in the opera profession was at Minnesota Opera, where I prepared his ‘Water Bird Talk.’"
   Gibson and Argento made a recording of Argento’s comic opera "Casanova’s Homecoming" at the opposite ends of a piano with two keyboards at the Schubert Club in Minneapolis, Gibson said. In 2003, Gibson conducted "Casanova" at Lucca Opera Theater (Italy), CCM Opera’s summer home
   "He is one of those people I used to call professor who now is my friend, so when Sandra brought up the idea of dong ‘Poe,’ I jumped all over it."
   Argento, 77, is one of America’s most distinguished composers, having won the Pulitzer Prize in 1975 for his song cycle "From the Diary of Virginia Woolf" and a Grammy in 2004 for "Casa Guidi" (best classical contemporary composition).
   "Poe" is generally regarded as Argento’s masterwork, "his Verdi opera," said Gibson.
   "You can describe it as romantic12-tone, lyric but serially based. It has tonal elements. We’re not talking Jake Heggie ("Dead Man Walking") or Carlisle Floyd ("Susannah"). We’re talking sophisticated, challenging musical language that once you become accustomed to it, is very rich. The orchestration is ravishing, extremely colorful."
   The opera has a large cast, including Poe (a tenor), Griswold (baritone), Mrs. Poe (soprano), Virginia Poe (soprano), Poe’s aunt Mrs. Clemm, Poe’s doctor (tenor) and a theater director. The chorus plays an important role as passengers and jurors.
   "Argento looks for characters who have a very rich inner life, troubled people, outcasts," said Gibson. "The theme of the piece is what happened after Poe died, that Griswold out of jealousy systematically set out to destroy his reputation. He wrote a biography of Poe that was taken for authentic where he simply slandered him. We now know that Griswold lied."
   Among Griswold’s fabrications – some using forged letters – were that Poe was a deserter from the army, was expelled from the University of Virginia and West Point for misbehavior (drinking and gambling) and was insane.
   "It wasn’t a lie that he married a 13-year-old girl (his first cousin Virginia Clemm)," said Gibson. "Would that he were the only alcoholic genius who ever lived. That line forms to the left."
   Virginia died of tuberculosis at 24. Poe died under mysterious circumstances two years later at 40. The opera reflects his death. Poe was found ill and delirious on the streets of Baltimore a week after boarding a ship from Richmond, Virginia. He died four days later without regaining consciousness.
   In conjunction with "The Voyage of Edgar Allan Poe," CCM is presenting an Argento Festival. There will be master classes with Argento and performances of two of his works:

•    Brian Cole will conduct CCM’s Contemporary Orchestra in a concert performance of "A Water Bird Talk" at 8 pm. Tuesday in Patricia Corbett Theater Tenor Randall Umstead is featured in this one-act monodrama about a professor whose lecture on water birds digresses into a complaint about his domestic life and lost youth. Admission is free.

• CCM Opera Studio presents Argento’s "The Boor" and William Walton’s "The Bear," one-act operas on the same subject (a play by Chekhov) May 27-29 in Cohen Studio Theater. Heidi Lauren Duke and Benjamin Smith direct. Bryan Perri and Ana-Maria Dafova conduct. Free.