[Translated from Russian] Gordon Getty’s music is, on the one hand, very relatable to our current times and the spiritual search of people today, and on the other, is a timeless reflection on life and death, love, the world, and the fate of mankind. The composer’s ability to bring out the deepest meaning behind the words and to bring this meaning into musical forms, along with his individual and expressive intonation, are distinctive features of his talent. 

[Translated from German] Gordon Getty, the eighty-one year-old American composer of The Canterville Ghost, prefers a conventional language of music that consequently ignores nearly everything that has changed music since Leoncavallo’s times.  He goes for a melodic soundpicture, therefore the harp and Marimba count as some of his preferred instruments – next to the wind section, which could have honoured Wagner....

The Canterville Ghost consists of, nearly without exception, recitatives, apart from both a short aria by Virginia and an enchanting duet with her newlywed Cecil right at the end ("Stay with me beautiful"), which come close to the bel canto.

[Translated from German] The strengths of composer Gordon Getty lay more with song, and in that, letting the text be sung in a way that one understands every syllable, whereby the transitions between reciting and singing pitches are fluent. So, one can easily follow the story of the ghost who fails to scare the Americans in the Canterville castle. Anthony Pilavachi stages this on a one-to-one basis in Tatjana Ivschina’s beautiful set design, creates several punchlines and gets out the fun that can be got out.

This also goes for the singers, revolving around Matthew Treviño’s ghost, Jennifer Porto’s enchanting Virginia, and Jonathan Michie's brisk US envoy. Acting-wise they give everything, while not always being in a comfortable position when delivering the text, which is without melodic relief or dramatic, lyrical or any power at all, apart from the distinctive, but too long, and dramatically strangely out of place, final love duet. Part of an opera is an orchestra. Getty has dressed it mostly in a soft silver color. In better moments it illustrates the text. Yet, most of the time it plays, because that’s what it’s supposed to do...it’s part of an opera. When it plays, then only sparing bits of scales which alternate with triads. Underneath, accented notes mark the bass, in between, a cembalo or a percussion instrument set the course. And, as The Canterville Ghost also deals with the clash of cultures between the United States and United Kingdom, "Yankee Doodle" meets "Rule Britannia". This all is easy to follow because Mathias Foremny is so unhurried at the conductor’s stand, that the "ghost" haunts a quarter of an hour longer than intended by the composer. That doesn’t make it any easier for the orchestra. Because of the akwardness of composition, their parts are not pleasant to play.

[Audio transcription, translated from German] Gordon Getty’s tonal language is - as was to be expected – severely measured by the standards of the German music world. Those who expected an original new sound were disappointed....

The European music history is a big stone quarry from which Getty helps himself to his heart’s content. There are passages in The Canterville Ghost which are dramatic and brassy and sound like Tchaikowsky, but there are also light moments à la Debussy, naturally with the obligatory harp.  The passages for the singers are nearly without exception recitative – melodic arias don’t feature.  Octave leaps coin the lines, which may seem original for the first five minutes, but after are tiresome.  There is also a leitmotiv which somehow sounds like the world hit "Maria" in Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story.