This tuneful, toe-tapping orchestral work is a brilliant treatment of the tango, 1920s-style by one of America's leading conservative composers. It is worthy of a long life on symphony and pops concert programs and has an important—nearly concerto-level—part for the accordion. Dominick Argento (born in York, PA, in 1927), working in one of the country's middle states, has shown the viability of opera as a contemporary American art form. He is an understanding and sensitive writer of vocal music, keenly aware both of the ranges and potential of the human voice and the nuances of expression. Argento has made his career in Minneapolis, beginning as one of the many creative artists who were drawn there by the new Tyrone Guthrie Theater. He founded the Center Opera (renamed Minnesota Opera) and began to write operas in the 1970s, quite often drawing on aspects of American life and culture. The Dream of Valentino was Argento's 13th opera. The libretto, which is by Charles Nolte, tells in a reasonably accurate outline the story of the career of the greatest of silent film stars, Rodolfo Alfonzo Raffaelo Pierre Filibert Guglielmi di Valentina D'Antonguolla (1895 - 1926), the great male romantic film lead of his time. The opera tells of his early days as a taxi dancer in New York, his disastrous first marriage, his stardom, his second marriage, bad decisions, and the legal battles that plagued his life and career. It overstates the alleged decline of his career resulting from those problems. (He died of post-operative infection following surgery for a bleeding ulcer.) The image of Valentino as a "Latin lover" (and the fact that he began his career as a dancer) associated him with the hot new dance from Argentina, the tango. Argento composed several tango themes that he used throughout the opera, a major part of its successful evocation of this era in American popular culture. The opera is in two acts, sketching, respectively, his ascent and his decline. It had a successful premiere at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., on January 15, 1994, by Washington opera conducted by Christopher Keene (coincidentally, the costume designer for the production was Garavani Valentino) and has received several productions since. Its success led to Argento's preparing this orchestral suite in 1997. It expands on several of the tango themes featured in the opera, recomposed into a continuous 11-minute orchestral suite. As was the case with the opera, there is a large percussion section providing colorful accents to the Latin tones of the themes. A major change in the orchestration added the accordion. Contributing to the sensual jazz age feeling of the sound is prominent use of an alto saxophone. The score of Valentino Dances breaks down into three main sections. The first is a straightforward tango depicting Valentino's early taxi dancing and stage work. The lyrical second section concerns itself with the woman he will marry. The third, with bitter accents, depicts Valentino's road tours near the end of his life.

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