Poe and “Gothic Opera”

This article seeks to fulfill two aims: The first is a more documentary one, namely, to give a broad overview, including short characteristics, of the rich operatic production following Poe’s texts. The second is a more interpretative one, that is, to investigate the reasons that brought Poe to such a privileged position. Given the special outline of his stories, the composers seem to be interested in a kind of sensual operatic experience, which André Schaeffner labeled “theater of fear” with regard to Debussy. Following this lead, the article aims to reconstruct a line of tradition using “Gothic” elements in operas, creating a “Gothic opera,” which can be traced back to Weber’s Freischütz, Marschner’s Vampyr, and Wagner’s Flying Dutchman. In order to explore what has attracted opera composers to Poe’s works for the last hundred years, I study Poe’s ideas on literary musicality, the reception of Gothic features in music and opera, and the aesthetic concepts that might be a unifying factor in these different operas. My idea is that there is a certain aesthetics of atmosphere that can be realized especially well in music and opera, respectively. Composers who are fascinated by Gothic conceptions of atmosphere do not bypass Poe as one of its most ingenious masters and readily adapt his texts to operatic works. By way of reading four of the Poe operas more closely, the aesthetics of a fearful musical atmosphere will be exemplified.