Facing Goya

Facing Goya (2000) is an opera in four acts by Michael Nyman on a libretto by Victoria Hardie. It is an expansion of their one-act opera called Vital Statistics from 1987, dealing with such subjects as physiognomy and its practitioners, and also incorporates a musical motif from Nyman's art song, "The Kiss", inspired by a Paul Richards painting. Nyman also considers the work thematically tied to his other works, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, The Ogre, and Gattaca, though he does not quote any of these musically, save a very brief passage of the latter. It was premièred at the Auditorio de Galicia, Santiago de Compostela, Spain on 3 August 2000. The revision with the cast heard on the album premiered at the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe, Germany, on October 19, 2002. Vital Statistics has been withdrawn. The Santiago version included more material from Vital Statistics.[1] The opera was most recently performed at the 2014 Spoleto Festival USA, located in Charleston, South Carolina.

The expanded opera deals with the elitism and prejudice of various movements in pseudosciences and art criticism, wrapped around a thread of a desire to make a clone of Francisco Goya through use of his long-lost skull, which he hid from the likes of Paul Broca, and which the Art Banker finds under a floorboard in a "degenerate art" gallery in Act II. This skull is the object of numerous fights in the second and third acts, often with one character snatching it from another. The opera is non-realistic in its presentation, with only one through-character, the Art Banker. Indeed, when Goya does appear, it is not the result of cloning, but a purely fantastical device. Four other performers play different roles in each section who are thematically connected. In addition, two actors are called for in non-speaking roles. The Art Banker also speaks narration into a dictaphone, but this was omitted from the studio recording, though the lines are reprinted in the booklet.

Roles

Soldiers, apparition of Goya, craniometry interns, porters, lab technicians.

Setting

The play moves through three times and places (act 3 and 4 are the same location weeks apart, and all but the baritone remain the same character). The libretto calls for "a Goyaesque landscape of bare branches with bloody clothes hanging off them, and stones jutting out of the earth like gravestones, in the manner of a charcoal drawing." Projections of art and diagrams are used throughout the production.

Costumes

The Genetic Research Doctor (Soprano 2) "wears jeans and a sparkly T-shirt".

The Genetic Academic (Baritone) "wears bicycle clips and a helmet".

The Microbiologist (Soprano 1) "wears a thigh length zip top, leather miniskirt, and stud earrings."

Orchestration

This is the first opera Nyman has scored with his band in mind. The studio recording includes five violins, two violas, one cello, two double basses, two each soprano and alto saxes (doubled), baritone sax, flute, alto flute, piccolo, trumpet and flugelhorn (doubled), French horn, bass trombone (doubled), tuba (doubled), euphonium (doubled), and electric guitar.

Recording

Facing Goya

Album cover of 2002 recording, conducted by the composer.
Studio album by Michael Nyman
Released 26 November 2002
Recorded June 2001, March 2002, May 2002 (Abbey Road Studios)
May 2002 (Snake Ranch)
Genre Opera, Contemporary classical music, minimalism
Length Disc 1: 71'56"
Disc 2: 61'54"
Language English
Label Warner Classics
Producer Michael Nyman
Austin Ince
Michael Nyman chronology
String Quartets 2, 3 & 4/If & Why
2002		 Facing Goya
2002		 24 Heures de la vie d'une femme
2003
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
MusicWeb International(mostly favorable)

A recording was released in 2002. It is Michael Nyman's 44th album. Alexander Balanescu left the band during the recording of this album, and his concertmaster seat awarded to Gabrielle Lester, who previously recorded with the band on La Sept (1989). Nyman's own label, MN Music, reissued the opera with a cover featuring his own photograph of a mass of dolls wrapped in plastic, in 2011. That edition contains a third disc with excerpts of Man and Boy: Dada and Love Counts.

Personnel

Cast

The Michael Nyman Band

Crew

References

Libretto by Victoria Hardie. Essays by Michael Nyman, Robert Worby, and Dr. Michael Neve in the booklet of the album, Warner Classics 0927-45342-2

  1. ↑ Pwyll ap Siôn. The Music of Michael Nyman: Text, Context and Intertext. Aldershot, Hants: Ashgate Publishing, 2007. p. 197

External links

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