Menotti: Goya, Opera
Directors: Kasper Bech Holten, Karin Veitl, Thomas Bogensberger
Cast: Plácido Domingo, Michelle Breedt, Iride Martinez, Christian Gerhaher
Austria, 2004, 101’, color
With Turkish subtitles
It was Placido Domingo who commissioned this opera from Menotti, suggesting the subject, taking part in the premiere (Washington,1986) and returning to it for his debut at the theater an der Wien in 2004. Domingo throws himself into the title role. As his friend Martin Zapater, Christian Gerhaher...sings and acts keenly and briskly. Emmanuel Villaume conducts an entirely diligent performance. --Opera, Mar'12
Goya is strong, passionate, quite theatrical and overwhelmingly romantic....This opera is constructed on unabashed passion and most of all excitement its intensive theater comic, probing, visually spectacular. --Washington Post, 1986
Gian Carlo Menotti, who would have celebrated his hundredth birthday in the summer of 2011, had a crucial influence on the history of 20th century opera. He wrote his first opera at the age of eleven and remained committed to this great art form for the rest of his life. His Amelia al Ballo, first performed in 1937, was an early example of the elements that were to bring him fame and lasting popularity: grand melodies, dense orchestration and an unerring sense of the dramatic. “What is important for me is to see living, singing people on the stage,” he once said and it was with this in mind that he wrote all the libretti for his own works. One can imagine the conversation about music in particular modern music that took place when Menotti invited Domingo to dinner in 1977. It wasn’t long before the crucial question was raised: Gian Carlo, why don’t you write an opera for me? As they thought about an appropriate topic, Domingo mentioned the life of the great Spanish artist Francisco de Goya, whose work he admired above all others. “Domingo suggested Goya and I agreed immediately,” said Menotti later. “I think it was the only time I accepted someone else’s idea.”
29 April Sunday, 16:00
12 May Saturday, 14:00
2 June Saturday, 17:00
10 June Sunday, 17:00
7 July Saturday, 14:00