Kate Mollison, The Little Match Girl
Brooding, febrile atmosphere hits you like a sledgehammer in The Little Match Girl by billionaire composer/philanthropist Gordon Getty. The libretto sets Hans Christian Andersen’s text near word-for-word, which makes for a lot of words. It’s another collective effort in which the story is told by the chorus; whether strictly opera or not, the music is awfully grandiose for a tale of such devastating loneliness. Asher Fisch conducts the Bavarian Radio Symphony Choir and the Munich Radio Orchestra in a performance that accordingly doesn’t hold back.
Norman Stinchcombe, Usher House
Getty gives us every trademark sound from the Universal and Hammer movie handbook – tremolando strings, percussion glissandi and hammered sforzando chords.
The [Welsh National Opera] orchestra, under Lawrence Foster, give it everything. Getty’s setting consists entirely of sung speech except when Poe (ardent tenor Jason Bridges) recalls his romantic feelings for Madeline Usher, and we get a hint of a Bernstein-like aria....
Getty’s Roderick (the enjoyably hammy Benjamin Bevan) is part buffoon part fruitcake. Anna Gorbachyova as Madeline has little to do but the part is expressively danced by Joanna Jeffries in Getty’s version.
George Hall, Usher House
A double bill of one-act operas setting Edgar Allan Poe's mysterious tale The Fall of the House of Usher brings WNO's season to an end. The first - Usher House, by the American Gordon Getty - receives its stage premiere, the second - La Chute de la maison Usher, a completion by Robert Orledge of some Debussy sketches written between 1908 and 1917 and left unfinished at his death - its first UK production.
Getty's work is the more interventionist in terms of Poe's short story - the writer himself becomes a character, replacing the friend of Roderick Usher who narrates the original. Musically, Getty's inspiration lies firmly in 19th-century music; Mussorgsky, for some reason, keeps coming to mind. Best known as one the richest individuals in America, as a composer 80-year-old Getty's technical skills prove limited; his wordy opera is competent but unremarkable.... Taken altogether it's a worthy evening, even if one hardly expects to see either opera again.
Ingobert Waltenberger, Usher House
[Translated from the German]
The opera, composed in the stylistic succession of Benjamin Britten, is based on Edgar Allen Poe's novel "The Fall of the House of Usher".... Gordon Getty...concentrates on the content of the words of the libretto written by the composer himself. The vocals are predominantly recitative and psalmodic with an orchestrally colorful orchestral part. The Orquestra Gulbenkian under the conductor Lawrence Foster transform the chamber music tonal score splendidly. The specific colors of the individual instruments come into their own and enhance the expressive spectrum of the voices. Finally, a contemporary opera that is poetic, music-dramatically stringent, sound-rich, and entertaining. The vocal part is well sung; in its Impressionist inspired parts one can see reminiscences of Debussy "Pelleas and Melksande". The composer always shows love for the human voice and its possibilities.
Miker Smith, Usher House
[Gordon Getty's Usher House] is just about an hour long and a few minutes are quite pleasant. The story of the brother and sister, the last of a long line of family oddities, has Poe parachuted in as a visitor to save them – or is there more sinister work afoot? Benjamin Bevan acts his socks off as a childlike, obsessed and tormented Roderick Usher, menaced by the mysterious Doctor Primus sung by Kevin Short. Jason Bridges sings and acts Eddie Poe with elegance but there is not a lot he can do with the plodding plot and over wordy libretto.