Falla: La vida breve

De Falla composed ’La vida breve’ between 1904 and 1905 for a competition which promised to stage the winner’s opera at the Teatro Real in Madrid. De Falla won, but the opera had to wait until 1913 and undergo a long process of revision before it went on stage at the Municipal Casino in Nice. It was a resounding success. The best of the opera lies in its picturesque parts: impressions of the Spanish land, feeling for landscape, for the sky, the day, the time all envelop the characters like a subtle atmosphere: the picturesque is thus intimately bound up with the life of the drama.

’Goyescas’ by Enrique Granados was first performed in public three years after ’La vida breve’. It is a zarzuela which cites literally many of the pieces in the piano collection of the same name - inspired by the famous paintings by Goya exhibited at the Prado museum. Completed in 1911 it soon became one of Granados’s best-known instrumental works. The Parisian première of ’Goyescas’ was postponed on account of the outbreak of the first world war. Granados thus accepted the invitation of the Metropolitan in New York, where the opera received its first (very successful) performance on 28th January 1916. In a very natural manner Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos and the entire cast bring across the depth and passion of these beautiful operas.