Debussy had long been fascinated by the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, familiar to French readers through the translations by Charles Baudelaire.

As early as 1890, André Suarès wrote in a letter to Romain Rolland that "Monsieur Claude Debussy ... is working on a symphony that will unfold psychological ideas based on the stories of Poe, in particular, The Fall of the House of Usher.

"[1] Nothing came of this plan but in the wake of the success of his only completed opera, Pelléas et Mélisande in 1902, Debussy turned to Poe for material for a potential successor.

By mid-June 1908 Debussy had begun another opera based on a Poe tale, the darker Fall of the House of Usher.

Jean-François Thibault writes: "One does not know what exact baritone ranges Debussy would have used for his three male characters, or if, as in Pelléas, he would have graduated them from Deep Bass, to Bass-Baritone, to Baritone-Martin.

The assignation of the three roles to baritones of the same range is significant in that it opens up the strong possibility that the characters are three incarnations of one single consciousness.

He lives in his crumbling ancestral home with his twin sister, Lady Madeline, who is afflicted by a wasting disease, and her doctor.

Allende-Blin's version was staged at the Deutsche Oper Berlin on 5 October 1979 with Jesús López Cobos conducting, the baritone Jean-Philippe Lafont as Roderick Usher, the soprano Colette Lorand as Lady Madeline, the baritone Barry McDaniel as the doctor, and the bass Walton Grönroos [sv] as Roderick's friend.