Erna Metdepenninghen, The Canterville Ghost
[Translated from Dutch] The American composer Gordon Getty (1933) adapted Oscar Wilde's novella himself for the libretto of his approximately one-hour long, one-act opera The Canterville Ghost. It is an opera in sixteen short scenes that possibly could catch on during a staging, but merely listening, frankly, it leaves a meager impression. I listened to this recording, which was staged in the Leipzig 2015 opera, with the libretto at hand, while following all the descriptions of decor, characters, and actions but never got in the mood. Some apparitions of the crying or growling ghost, whether covered with chains or not, were, in a purely auditory sense, ridiculous. Getty's score is also not able to bring you into the right ambiance. Only in the last scene does the music flourish in the duet between Virginia and Cheshire and is the Gewandhaus Orchestra able to display its rich sound.
Opera Nederland, The Canterville Ghost
[Translated from Dutch] The musical idiom is accessible and economic. It is a kind of romanticized parlando drenched in declamation and melodic fragments. There is no large, thematic development or dramatic intensification. Getty pieces Wilde’s text together with safe musical effects, but avoids a sense of recognition and the music at no point feels new. Ultimately the opera The Canterville Ghost has the same effect as the ghost of Sir Simon: there is no surprise or uncertainty.
Robert Benson, The Canterville Ghost
Gordon Getty's latest venture into opera is a setting of Oscar Wilde's comic novella about the The Canterville Ghost.... This opera surely is a pleasant experience, but hardly memorable.
Sydney Lessner, Opera News
On October 21, Center for Contemporary Opera served up a spooky double bill by Gordon Getty at the Kaye Playhouse, pairing his ghoulish, disconcerting Usher House, based on Edgar Allan Poe’s "Fall of the House of Usher", with his adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s lightheartedly supernatural The Canterville Ghost. Getty, also the librettist, made the savvy choice of turning Poe’s unnamed narrator into the author himself, “Eddie” to his old friend Roderick Usher. The opera was most compelling when it followed the outlines of the original: the reminiscences of the two men, the strange, symbiotic relationship between Roderick and his deteriorating twin Madeline, and her climactic emergence from the grave to claw Roderick and the house down with her. The addition of an obscure plan by a Dr. Primus Usher, who may be the reincarnation (or even the ghost) of a prior Usher, was more confusing than illuminating.
Getty’s recitative-heavy score hews to natural speech patterns and is chock full of dissonances and singular effects. There could have been room for more lyricism, however; strophic settings for Primus’s plan and Roderick’s explanation of the family curse might have clarified the former and focused the latter....
[In The Canterville Ghost], Getty’s consonant, upbeat music suited the proceedings, and the piece ended with a lovely, lilting duet for Virginia and her suitor, Cecil. The opera is composed as a series of short vignettes, and many of them simply stopped, rather than ending with any definition. Without transitional music to connect the scenes, the piece felt choppy....
Michael Schulman, The Canterville Ghost
“Stage and page have different needs,” writes composer Getty...explaining in the CD’s booklet the alterations in his libretto when adapting Oscar Wilde’s novella. Wilde’s whimsical tale remains essentially intact, however.... Getty’s bright, witty score strongly supports the action. This is a very stage-worthy and entertaining addition to the repertoire of one-act, English-language operas.