Minnesota and Minnesota Opera together commissioned The Voyage of Edgar Allan Poe in 1975-76, with a libretto by Charles Nolte. As a result of that work, which received wildly enthusiastic reviews, the New York City Opera commissioned him. He composed Miss Havisham's Fire (1977), with a libretto by Scrymgeour. It was not initially well-received, and Argento revised it into a one-act monodrama, Miss Havisham's Wedding Night, which the Minnesota Opera premiered on May 1, 1981, at the Tyrone Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, conducted by Philip Brunelle. He revised Miss Havisham's Fire in 1995 and it has been successfully revived and performed since. In 1984, the Minnesota Opera commissioned Casanova's Homecoming, with text by the composer; it went on to a well-received run at New York City Opera. At the insistence of Beverly Sills, then the company's musical director, the opera was the first in New York City to be performed in English with English supertitles. She wanted to ensure that the audience understood all the jokes. The opera won the 1986 National Institute for Music Theatre Award. Argento next composed The Aspern Papers (1987) as a vehicle for Frederica von Stade, with his own libretto adapted from the 1888 novella by Henry James. His next opera and arguably largest work to date was The Dream of Valentino, which premiered at the Kennedy Center in 1993. Critic Anne Midgette of The New York Times has noted that Argento's operas tend to be very well received upon their premieres but lack an "easy popular hook" and are rarely revived. Song cycles and "monodramas" Argento's song cycles are notable for his frequent use of dramatic, unusual text, most often prose that does not have immediately apparent musical possibilities. His works blur the distinction between straightforward groupings of songs and dramatic works, which he terms "monodramas". His best-known song cycle is From the Diary of Virginia Woolf, with a text he assembled from the book of that title. Written for Janet Baker in 1974, it won the Pulitzer Prize for Music and is performed frequently. Other prominent works in a similar vein include Letters from Composers (1968), which uses as its text letters written by Chopin, Puccini, and others; Casa Guidi (1983), which sets letters written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning; and A Few Words About Chekhov (1996), which adapts letters by Anton Chekhov. Argento's other song cycles are highly varied: A Water Bird Talk