Edgar Allan Poe’s dream poem is as close to music as words can ever come. First published on October 9, 1849 – two days after Poe’s death – this haunting, lyric poem is thought to have been written in memory of Poe’s young wife, Virginia, who died in 1847. Gilles Tibo has set the poem in his native Quebec, where the narrator and his childhood love Annabel Lee discover the beauty of the rugged, wind-swept Gaspé Peninsula. But when Annabel Lee dies and is borne away as mysteriously as she had come, the dream goes on, refreshed each time that the moon beams and the stars shine down upon the great rock of Percé that becomes her sepulcher.
