Is it just my guilty conscience, or did New Jersey kill Enrique Granados?
The great Spanish composer was persuaded to work his masterful set of piano miniatures, titled “Goyescas,” into an opera by none other than Ernest Schelling (whose birthday, by coincidence, is today). Schelling, born in Belvidere, NJ, was the barnstorming pianist who gave the U.S. premiere of “Goyescas” in its piano guise. He would later become music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
Granados honored Schelling’s suggestion, with the idea of unveiling his new work at the Paris Opera. However, the outbreak of war caused him to shift his focus to New York’s Metropolitan Opera, where “Goyescas” received its world premiere on January 28, 1916, opening to enthusiastic reviews.
It was Woodrow Wilson, former president of Princeton University and former governor of New Jersey – then President of the United States – that really did Granados in. The positive reception of “Goyescas” led Wilson to extend an invitation to the composer to come play at the White House, an offer Granados could hardly refuse. As a result, Granados delayed the date of his departure, and a few weeks later, he and his wife were drowned in the English Channel, after their ship, the S.S. Essex, was torpedoed by a German u-boat.
I think New Jersey, and in particular Princeton, owes him something. Therefore, I hope you’ll join me tomorrow morning on WPRB, as we honor Granados on the 150th anniversary of his birth, with a full morning of his music, including an assortment of his rarely-heard orchestral, choral and chamber works, and, yes, his opera “Goyescas.”
We genuflect before one of music’s great moustaches, this Thursday morning from 6 to 11 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com. It will take plenty of caffeine before I can properly enunciate “sesquicentennial,” on Classic Ross Amico.
