Goyescas: Intermezzo

Goyescas must be unique in the history of opera in that it is based on music originally written for piano. The piano Goyescas are, as the title suggests, a tribute to the Spanish artist Francesco Goya, whose tapestry cartoons depicting scenes of everyday life in Madrid inspired the six pieces that make up the two sets. The opera, which gave Granados the opportunity to present those scenes in a dramatic context and bring them to life on the stage, was written three years after the piano pieces were completed and first performed at the New York Met in January 1916.

An unlikely project, it might well have failed if Granados had limited his score to the six piano pieces. In fact, little more than half of the opera is based on straightforward transcriptions and much of the material is new. The Intermezzo was written specially to accommodate the scene change between the first and second tableaux. During the course of rehearsals, it became clear that it wasn’t long enough and Granados had two days in which to extend it. Which version he preferred we will never know since he died before he could finalise the score: the boat in which he and his wife were travelling back home from New York to Spain was torpedoed in the English Channel. Either way, the Intermezzo opens with a heroic flamenco gesture that even at this stage clearly anticipates the tragic end of the opera - and does so still more clearly on its dramatic recall in the middle. The great lyrical inspiration, in both versions, is the nostaligically expressive melody introduced by lower strings to a guitar-style pizzicato accompaniment and extended with lingering affection in the second half.

Gerald Larner ©2006