The plot is essentially all there in the blurb—a lovely young wife, despite the advice of her father, marries an artist, and then withers and dies as he attepts to capture her beauty on canvas. This is a classic Poe story in the beautiful-women and disturbed-men vein (it would be misogynistic if it were written by anyone but Poe). The point is, like most operas, not the revelation of plot, but rather the indulgence in the passions involved, and in Gregg Martin’s chamber opera version, those passions come across, for the most part, beautifully.