Dominick Argento: The Voyage of Edgar Allan Poe

Ill and feverish, Boston-born writer and poet Edgar Allan Poe – his creativity and inspiration in the doldrums after his wife Virginia’s death two years prior – plans to sail to Baltimore on a “voyage of discovery.” But is a ship scheduled to depart?

Amidst shipboard phantoms, morbid melodrama, a hasty child marriage, grotesque masquerade partygoers, a profusion of alcohol, and a haunting voice singing Poe’s last complete poem, “Annabel Lee”, two things exist: Poe and his dubious literary executor, the mercurial Griswold.

A trial to contest madness, advised by fictional French detective Auguste Dupin, seemingly conjures Poe’s past, revealing a grisly auction of muses, his beloved Virginia’s funerary reawakening, and glittering visions of what lies beyond the grave.

Join the Odyssey for an excursion like no other from Pulitzer Prize-winning master of contemporary American opera, Dominick Argento.

The Huntington Theater

April 5, 2024 7:30PM