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Argento: Miss Havisham's Fire Rekindled in St. Louis

(October 2001)

A keenly-awaited revival took place in June, as the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis premiered a new version of Dominick Argento’s 1979 opera Miss Havisham’s Fire. Trimmed by nearly an hour from its original length, Miss Havisham’s Fire stood revealed as "a very successful bit of theater, perhaps even a major rediscovered work of the American lyric stage," as Philip Kennicott wrote in The Washington Post. Said Paul Griffiths of The New York Times, "A vivid production by the Opera Theatre of St. Louis and a magnificent central performance [Erie Mills, in the title role] have rewarded this composer for his patience and rewarded the stage director James Robinson for his faith in the piece....Miss Havisham’s Fire rekindled is the hit of Opera Theatre’s 26^th season." Opera News called it "a knockout...a brilliant theatrical work."

Argento and his librettist, John Olon-Scrymgeour, drew the poignant and disturbing story of Miss Havisham’s Fire from Dickens’s Great Expectations. Observes Kennicott, "Nineteenth-century potboilers are not easily turned into two-act contemporary operas; Miss Havisham’s Fire is a rare example of successful distillation.

"It is an opera of reminiscence, on a narrative, musical, and even structural level. Dickens’s neglected bride, Miss Havisham, lives in a conflation of past pain and present madness that is entirely of her own devising. Musically she is afflicted by old and vaguely remembered tunes, which return with uncanny effect throughout Argento’s score....His music, which has the thematic concision of Benjamin Britten and the orchestral profligacy of Richard Strauss, unfolds with a compelling sense of individuality and freedom....The music graciously submits to the will of the words, an old-fashioned operatic marriage, but a successful one."

Wrote Heidi Waleson of The Wall Street Journal, "There are many beauties in the opera’s music....Mr. Argento’s strength in vocal writing showed in the title role’s formidable mix of dramatic and coloratura singing." And John von Rhein of the Chicago Tribune praised Argento for his "unerring grasp of what makes effective musical theater....This was a major revival of an important sleeper of an opera, the triumphant centerpiece of the company’s festival season."

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