Paul Corfield Godfrey, The Canterville Ghost
Gordon Getty, as usual, acts as his own librettist here, and it has to be said that he sticks pretty closely to Wilde’s original even when this results in some over-melodramatic language....
Otherwise Getty has made a very good redaction of Wilde’s text, condensing it into twenty scenes with some additional material added at the beginning and the end. But some of the scenes are very short indeed, three dispensing with sung text altogether; and each one is separated out into a self-contained unit. That was probably inevitable, especially in realistic scenery as appears to have been the basis for the production at Leipzig opera on which this studio recording was based. But it must have made for a very stop-and-start effect in the theatre. I see that there are proposals to give the opera in Los Angeles and New York as a double-bill with Getty’s earlier Usher House (of which I reviewed the world première production in Cardiff for Seen and Heard three years ago, with considerable enthusiasm), and it seems to me that some revisions to provide a more continuous flow of music might be beneficial. As it is, far too many of the scenes seem to stop and start abruptly, often with only a couple of chords to begin or conclude the action.
The sheer wordiness of Wilde’s text too seems to be the source of problems. Even in the extended scene between the Ghost and Victoria, where the words cry out for some emotional and lyrical expansion, much of the action proceeds in recitative-like setting over atmospheric but fundamentally static chords. Only in the final scene (where Getty provides his own lyrics) is there any sustained melodic writing, which in the event comes rather too late after the principal action is over. Nor does Getty seem to provide enough music to accommodate some of the stage action called for in the libretto, a failing which I had previously noted in his earlier opera Plump Jack....
In the past I have thoroughly enjoyed much of Getty’s music, especially when he allows himself to give his singers lyrical lines to sing; but, as I have observed, these seem to be in dangerously short supply here. Perhaps revision, including some expansion of the orchestral score to provide interludes between scenes, might give a more appealing impression.
Infodad Team, The Canterville Ghost
Gordon Getty’s one-act, one-hour opera The Canterville Ghost is also a targeted rather than general-interest release. It is quite well-done in its handling of Oscar Wilder’s novella, his first published story (1887): Getty has a fine sense of the contrast between Old World and New World that lies at the heart of the tale, in which Americans move into a haunted castle and refuse to be frightened by the resident ghost.
Getty is not the first contemporary composer to create an opera based on this story: Alexander Knaifel did so back in 1966. And the novella has been adapted in many other media, including film and television. So Getty’s handling of it as a rather traditional opera, using his own libretto, is quite fine but on the straightforward side. In Wilde’s story, the American family’s 15-year-old daughter, Virginia, eventually helps the ghost find peace and move on to the next world, and the way in which she and the ghost learn from each other is ultimately the point of the story. Virginia is not exactly heroic, however – she is simply willing to take the ghost seriously. Getty casts Virginia (Alexandra Hutton) in a rather more heroic mode than is strictly necessary, and as a result the ghost (Matthew Treviño) is somewhat less the center of attention than he is in Wilde’s tale. In operatic terms, this certainly works, and the two characters’ voices are particularly well contrasted (she being the only soprano in the cast and he the only bass).
Wilde’s story itself repays multiple readings, since it includes the clash of values between Old and New Worlds, the meaning of growing up, and some meditations on life, death and love. Getty’s opera is more of a surface-level treat, but it is a treat nevertheless – for those interested in a story with 19th-century sensibilities being clothed in contemporary musical dress (the opera was first performed in 2015). The PentaTone recording is very fine, and opera lovers looking for something new – and not musically overstated – will find The Canterville Ghost involving, if not particularly haunting.
Getty’s musical language is essentially tonal, his essential focus being on communicating the meaning of the words of his libretto.
Louis Bilodeau, The Canterville Ghost
[Translated from French] If we applaud Mister Getty's taste in the great texts of English-language literaure, how can we be infinitely more reserved about his talents as a librettist and, above all, a composer? Just as his treatments offer pale reflections of the masterpieces of Shakespeare, Poe, and Wilde, his music is sorely lacking in dramatic intensity, and indeed induces a good dose of boredom. The Canterbury Ghost lacks a good deal of the finest and most exquisite humor infused in Oscar Wilde's short story, and attends too much to the sentimental side, as evidenced by the prologue (which takes place around 1960) and the final scene. Resolutely tonal, Getty's score brings vocal lines of desolate expressive poverty, constantly punctuated by arpeggios or leaps that cause great wearines. Associated with the Ghost and his bygone time, the harpsichord happily brings a welcome color into this orchestral wasteland... [Matthew Treviño in the title role] gives some interest to this recording of an opera that will certainly not go down in history.
Philip Kennicott, The Canterville Ghost
Despite its conventionally sentimental conclusion, most of Oscar Wilde’s The Canterville Ghost is a laugh-out-loud satire on the foibles of an American family given to treating the super-sensuous world of ghosts with pragmatic litigiousness, patent medicines and miracle cleansers and lubricants. Gordon Getty’s opera based on the tale uses much of Wilde’s text verbatim but comes across more like the standard Gothic drama that Wilde was satirising. The humour is all there on the page, and perhaps on stage the slapstick indignities directed at Wilde’s hapless ghost register as farce. On recording, however, it feels as if the singers are trying to project comedy in the musical spirit of Owen Wingrave or The Turn of the Screw.
Getty, now in his eighties, is the billionaire son of J Paul Getty but has evolved into a serious composer with a particular affinity for opera. The Canterville Ghost was premiered in Leipzig in 2015, on a double bill with Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci. The composer crafted his own libretto for the work, adding an opening scene in which the young couple – the American ingénue Virginia and her eager aristocratic suitor the Duke of Cheshire – are seen many decades later, speaking to their great-grandchildren. The rest of the story is told in flashback.
Getty’s musical language is conservative but colourful, but his text-setting, with frequent large leaps across consonant intervals, tends to the monotonous. The orchestra responds mainly with expostulation – harpsichord tremolos, a piano glissando and emphatic passages with strings in unison or parallel with other instruments. But there are a few more elaborately and more effectively composed scenes, including scene 6, in which the happy family strategises about how to deal with their unwelcome cohabitant at breakfast, and scene 19, which reprises some of the same material.
The works builds to a tender and wistful romantic-comedy conclusion, with pleasing strophic passages and a fine duet for two of the cast’s best singers, soprano Alexandra Hutton and tenor Timothy Oliver. Bass Matthew Treviño is also effective as the churlish but not unsympathetic Sir Simon, who feels obliged to haunt Canterville Chase with professionalism and consummate theatrical integrity.
Matthias Foremny conducts the Leipzig Opera and Gewandhaus forces effectively, though one wishes that the musicians had more to do. Getty has created a lean, fast-moving, vocal-friendly theatre piece, but it could sparkle a lot more than it does
Fanfare, The Canterville Ghost
There isn’t much music. The vocal writing is little more than accompanied recitative most of the time. That at least makes every word intelligible, no mean feat for an opera. In an epilogue five years later, Virginia and her husband Cecil sing a pleasant duet that finally rises to operatic stature, but it is in no way memorable. The whole sounds artificial, forced, and very English for an American opera. The orchestra contributes a pleasant melange of chamber-like utterances and the occasional booming chord. The performance follows the cautious nature of the opera; everyone speaks or sings clearly, but there is little sense of acting. Timing is atrocious, with constant pauses between speech and response. The great Gewandhaus Orchestra (which is the orchestra of Oper Leipzig) is sheer overkill. The opera’s 20 scenes are neatly apportioned to as many tracks. The English libretto is a proper but unnecessary addition to the booklet.
It’s difficult to pin down this opera’s place in the world. Its humor is too gentle, too subtle, for the stage. Do I underestimate an audience of children when I think that it needs more life and more spirit—more nourishment—than Getty provides?