Composer, born in York, Pennsylvania, USA. After studies in the USA and Italy, he taught at the University of Minnesota from 1958. He is best known for his operas in a melodious, conservative style, including The Aspern Papers (1988).
Dominick Argento (born 27 October 1927, York, Pennsylvania) is an American composer, best known as a leading composer of lyric opera.
Argento has written fourteen operas, major song cycles, orchestral works, and many choral pieces. In a predominantly tonal context, his music freely combines tonality, atonality and a lyrical use of twelve-tone writing, though none of Argento's music approaches the experimental avant garde fashions of the post World War II era. He was a professor of music for more than 40 years at the University of Minnesota, teaching composition, history of opera and orchestration.
Argento was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1975 for his song cycle "From the Diary of Virginia Woolf". The recording by Frederica Von Stade and the Minnesota Orchestra of his song cycle for mezzo-soprano and orchestra, "Casa Guidi", settings of letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, won the 2004 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition.
Argento's operas, solo vocal music and choral pieces show an unusually sophisticated literate taste. He wrote his own librettos for his later operas. No other American composer of opera has sustained such a high quality of output for the stage in a large body of work. Postcard from Morocco was the opera that first created his national and international reputation. Prominent productions have been Casanova's Homecoming for the opening of the Ordway Theater in St. Paul, The Aspern Papers, written for the talents of Frederica Von Stade, at Dallas Opera and broadcast on PBS, The Voyage of Edgar Allan Poe at Lyric Opera of Chicago, Casanova's Homecoming at New York City Opera, and The Dream of Valentino at Washington Opera. His one critical failure, Miss Havisham's Fire, premiered at New York City Opera in 1979, was redeemed in a highly praised revised version produced at St. Louis Opera in 2001. Argento's operas have also been produced in Europe, particularly in Germany.
Like his operas, Argento's songs are distinctive for vocal lyricism and exquisitely sensitive text settings.
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