Director David Pountney did a frankly extraordinary job of presenting the operas back to back without the Getty coming off too much the worse by comparison to the Debussy – that is, theatrically speaking at least...

In keeping with the traditions of Poe on film, the basis for Pountney’s success was his cinematic vision, ironically making the most of the very thing for which Debussy and now Getty have stood accused with their respective Usher scores; namely, producing music more suited to film than to opera....

Getty’s adaptation...opts for a pedestrian and unvaried 19th century narrative treatment with, it must be said, scant literary or musical imagination....

Getty’s wordy adaptation...seems not just mundane but wilfully naive in its refusal to plumb any kind of psychological depth.

Further points are raised when one considers Poe’s ‘total’ theory of the short story, of which ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ is an outstanding example. In Poe’s view, the brevity of the form allows the writer to unify all elements of the work, including close details of technique and style, towards a single effect; the aim being to transform mere narrative into a perfectly integrated work of art. This idea has more than a hint of – dare I suggest – Gesamtkunstwerk. In any case, viewed through this lens, Getty’s score falls painfully short of the writer’s innovative vision, with hammy pastiche (complete with Addams Family harpsichord at one point) and cardboard characterisation. Having Poe himself appear as narrator hardly adds to the subtlety.