Monday’s event included a few spoken words of tribute from Thomas and guest star Plácido Domingo, but, for the most part, the emphasis was on music, including Getty’s own. Among other offerings, the concert included the first performance of “A Prayer for My Daughter,” Getty’s resourceful and often lovely choral setting of Yeats’ poem.

Getty’s compositions have never been noted for their daring or stylistic inventiveness; they are steeped in traditional forms and harmonies, and operate cautiously within those bounds. But his most appealing work - the 1998 cantata “Joan and the Bells” - boasts a wonderful level of fluency and imagination.

“A Prayer for My Daughter,” which packs Yeats’ expansive poem into a terse 11-minute span, is another of Getty’s alluring creations. From its turbulent opening depiction of a howling rainstorm through the poet’s more abstract musings and on to the final evocation of a marriage ceremony, Getty continually finds a musical vein to reflect the shifting character of each of the poem’s eight stanzas.

There are elegant touches of word painting along the way - particularly the big choral harmony in response to Yeats’ phrase “magnanimities of sound” - and an ingenious use of the orchestra. Ragnar Bohlin’s Symphony Chorus delivered the piece with energy and precision.

“A Prayer for My Daughter” was the last of Getty’s pieces on the program, following the slender charms of four Emily Dickinson settings delivered by soprano Lisa Delan and pianist Robin Sutherland, and three short orchestral movements from “Ancestor Suite.” It brought Getty onstage to receive a big, loving ovation from the audience.

January 7, 2014

Getty wrote his own libretto and takes considerable liberty with the text, to the extent of making Poe himself…a character in the opera. There is a sense of foreboding throughout the work.

“The Fall of the House of Usher” was Poe’s most famous piece of prose. But even the biggest fans of that early American master of Gothic storytelling shouldn’t be put off by Getty’s canny twisting of the tale: He’s made Poe himself the participant narrator, framing the single-act story with the author’s mood-setting Prologue and somber Postlogue, in a manner evocative of Captain Vere’s role at the beginning and end of Benjamin Britten’s opera Billy Budd. In addition, Getty…has added elements to the devolution of the ancient curse on the Usher family, and has chosen to put the Usher Ancestors into the production (as either silent performers or projections). These alterations heighten the dramatic impact of the show, effectively conveyed in this recording by the emotive and powerful voices of the small international cast… The cast enlivens Getty’s primarily discursive score, with Poe delivering the single closest thing to a set-piece aria — the harmonically chimerical “Where is my lady”… Another compositional standout is the extended orchestral writing that accompanies the entrance in Scene 2 of the Ancestors to the ballroom…and the dancing that follows. Getty grows more lyrical in this scene, with a smartly sardonic aside to Johann Strauss, and an occasional macabre stagger to the dance rhythm. The gestural aspect of much of the vocal score involves many repeated figures and octave leaps, well-paced and artfully accompanied by the Orquestra Gulbenkian… After the Prologue, the theatrical tone becomes deceptively collegial and upbeat, with Roderick welcoming a visit from his one-time school “Eddie” Poe… The transition to Roderick’s revelation of his family’s bleak history is a bit jarring and complex, but nonetheless entertaining…Getty colors the noir settings of the story and its location with effective deployment of horns and woodwinds, and interposes a celesta to represent the apparition of Madeline.

Usher House is [Getty’s] treatment of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, and it is a more edgy work. Poe is introduced into the drama in the role of narrator telling the story. Getty has made other adjustments…He actually makes the Ushers more appealing and likeable than they are in Poe (or in Glass’s opera), and the horror of the ending is all the more dramatic because we have been attracted to them. The music is darker than [Getty’s] Plump Jack, as is appropriate for the story. One hears echoes of Bartók, Debussy, and Mahler in the writing. But the score is not mere copying of others’ music. Even if Getty has not developed a strong musical voice that one can identify as his, it is not music that sounds like a rehashing of someone else’s. Poe’s monologue beginning “Where is my lady, O where has she gone?” is eloquent and beautiful, and stays in the memory. Usher House takes longer to get to know than the more immediately appealing Plump Jack, but its rewards may well be deeper. The more I returned to it, the more I enjoyed it. In addition to Getty’s typically strong vocal writing, the orchestration of this work is imaginative and colorful…Usher House merits exploration on the part of anyone interested in hearing a conservative but imaginative voice in contemporary opera.