Dominick Argento

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 production of The Voyage of Edgar Allan Poe received funding from OPERA America’s Next Stage program, supported by Gene Kaufman, Terry Eder-Kaufman, and New Vision for Opera.