In Goya, (as in La Loca, written several years before it) Menotti set before himself the difficult task of creating one of the most notoriously treacherous types of opera: the biographical opera that spans many years of the protagonist's life. The compression of an entire life into a few episodes is rarely effective; the bio-operas that succeed, such as Boris Godunov, Pfitzner's Palestrina, and Hindemith's Mathis der Maler, work because they focus on a single episode or a limited time period in the protagonist's life and ...
Read More
In Goya, (as in La Loca, written several years before it) Menotti set before himself the difficult task of creating one of the most notoriously treacherous types of opera: the biographical opera that spans many years of the protagonist's life. The compression of an entire life into a few episodes is rarely effective; the bio-operas that succeed, such as Boris Godunov, Pfitzner's Palestrina, and Hindemith's Mathis der Maler, work because they focus on a single episode or a limited time period in the protagonist's life and have an overriding theme larger than the biography of an individual. La Loca and Goya concern larger-than-life historical figures, spanning the characters' lives from youth to old age, but treat no theme larger than the individual's biography and are inevitably episodic rather than dramatically cohesive. Even episodic operas can overcome scenarios that are more like snapshots than integrated narratives (La bohčme, for instance), if the music is strong enough. The music in Goya,...
Read Less