Getty, in this well-traveled 1981 song cycle, wisely matches the poetry's no-frills tone...It's touching how he takes her words to heart. 

 

With only a few exceptions, the songs are simple–even simplistic, as if the compower were channeling music that Dickinson herself, an amateur pianist and singer, could have come up with for her own poems. As Getty puts it in the notes, “I have set them, in large part, just as Emily might have if her music had found a balance between tradition and iconoclasm something like that in her poems.”

Gordon Getty (b. 1933) has written mostly for the voice, and The White Election stands as a clear masterpiece... Each work here is a small jewel and should please just about anyone, whether you're familiar with Emily Dickinson's poetry or not.

Getty is a skilled and imaginative composer who does, in fact, use dissonance to create tension and, as he says, "to suggest a degree of disorientation." His music is melodic, often tuneful, but always well crafted...

I found both Getty's libretto and music to be effective in presenting an augmented version of Poe's tale. It worked well that the character of Madeline Usher, Roderick's sister who was entombed a few days too early, was assigned to a dancer (Jamielyn Duggan), with Madeline's voice sung by Illinois soprano Jacqueline Piccolino.

Getty, though now in his early 80s, has spoken about composing another opera (he mentions the subject of Oscar Wilde's “Canterville Ghost”) as a companion piece. One could imagine such a double bill being staged by opera companies (especially with ghostly appearances such as in Haneke's projections) in the weeks of late October.