Goyescas/ Gianni Schicchi

If movement and image are essential to Goyescas, they are no less so to Gianni Schicchi. Both short and distinct operas making their world première at the Metropolitan Opera House just two years apart. The reason was the First World War plaguing Europe that led artists to seek safer havens. Goyescas premièred in 1914 as Enrique Granados’ only opera, built from the orchestral suite of the same name which pays tribute to Goya’s working-class Madrid of the nineteenth century. Rarely performed, it makes its debut at the Real with staging by José Luis Gómez and set design by Eduardo Arroyo.

Two years later, in 1918, Gianni Schicchi was premièred. The third piece in Puccini’s Il trittico, a comic opera inspired by an episode of Dante’s Divine Comedy -an entertaining and playful portrayal of cunning and greed- it soon emerged as the audience’s favourite, with a musical language that proved to be the most audacious and modern of the trilogy. Considered the last great masterpiece of Italian comic opera, it comes to the Real with the sharp and biting humour of Woody Allen.