“My interest is people,” Dominick Argento told Minnesota Public Radio in 2002. “I am committed to working with characters, feelings, and emotions.” And what better way to honour the late composer’s artistic reason d’être than by coupling his one-act monodrama Miss Havisham's Wedding Night (a paired-down version of his abortive 1979 opera Miss Havisham’s Fire) with Aaron Copland’s abstract musical exploration of legendary introvert Emily Dickinson. On paper – or in this case, on programme – such a “labyrinthine gender study” is an attractive gambit, and director Ralph Bridle well-nigh pulls it off.
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I say well-nigh because, in truth, this splicing-together of musically disparate worlds feels a touch lopsided. Leonard Bernstein put it rather savagely when he described Copland’s music as plain: “That’s one of his biggest words – plain. It’s plain! That applied to a lot of music of his”. And indeed, it could easily be argued that the austere and abstract 12 Poems of Emily Dickinson – none of which contain the popular American flavour that permeates his ballets – are just that. This is not to say that they are boring, but that a stick-thin piano score – often merely outlining chords – and distinctly economic approach to vocal writing present a distinctly ascetic musical landscape, which, when heard alongside the sumptuous Miss Havisham, feels like the gruel to Argento’s cinnamon-charged porridge.
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