The Fall of the House of Usher

About

According to Edgar Allan Poen Novell The Fall of the Usher House is a two-act opera for orchestra and soloists (1987), libretto by Arthur Yorinks. Poe’s famous horror story has fascinated poets, dramatists and composers for over a hundred years. Poe alludes a lot in his text, but brings out hardly anything. Is the story real or is it a hallucination? What is the narrator’s (William) relationship with his friend Roderick Usher and Roderick’s dying sister, Madeline? Has Madelin been buried alive, or is the demon of hell making a spectacular revenge at the end? Is the great house and community in which they live a perverted nest of evil? Incest, homosexuality, murder, and the supernatural are present in the work, but again, they may only exist in the imagination of the audience.