Enrique Granados’ First Opera

Cover of the album being discussed (from its Amazon.com Web page)

This is the time of year when the flow of new releases is not as strong as usual. As a result, it provides me with an opportunity to explore works that I had overlooked in the past. This weekend I encountered the two-CD Naxos release of Enrique Granados’ first operatic success, María del Carmen. In Enrique Granados: Poet of the Piano, Walter Aaron Clark praised it as the composer’s best opera, describing it as a Spanish version of Pietro Mascagni’s one-act success, “Cavalleria rusticana” with a happy ending. The album was produced, engineered, and edited by Andrew Lang based on recordings of performances on October 23, 26, and 29, 2003 at the Theatre Royal in Wexford, Ireland.

When the album was released, the back cover provided a hyperlink for the libretto, but it is only in Spanish. If Opera Folio is a reliable source, then an English translation is not currently available. (There is a Web page for it on the Operas Arias Composers Singers Web site, but it is blank!) On the other hand, the accompanying booklet provides a perfectly good synopsis of the plot, with track numbers inserted to guide the listener.

Granados’ operatic achievements are somewhat limited. María del Carmen, composed in 1898, was his first three-act undertaking; but he never completed it. His best-known opera is the one-act “Goyescas,” completed in 1915. He would die the following year. Compared with the other genres in his repertoire, the number of works composed for theatrical performances is quite modest. Nevertheless, one can appreciate his “Hispanic rhetoric” in the instrumental passages of María del Carmen, even if the narrative (based, as is so often the case, on mutual hatred between the protagonists) may involve more “soap” than “opera!” When that plot is set aside, one can still appreciate Granados’ command of a Hispanic rhetoric.