From around the world: Madrid. (International).(Opera Review)

A century ago, nationalistic operas were in vogue--with each composer exalting the virtues of his own nation. One exception is Isaac Albeniz's Merlin, which opened at the Teatro Real on May 27 in what is believed to be its first complete staging. Admired mainly for his Suite Iberia for piano, which depicts the Spanish regions he loved, Albeniz (1860-1909) would seem a most unlikely English composer. Yet at the time of his death, he was working on an ambitious Arthurian trilogy, Merlin, Launcelot and Guenevere. (He completed the first and started the orchestration of the second.) The composer managed to live most of his mature years free from financial worries because of a Faustian contract he signed with dilettante banker Sir Francis Burdett Money-Coutts, which left him secure but required him to work exclusively on setting texts by his patron. Conductor Jose de Eusebio has made it his mission to bring these works to light. He has recorded Merlin (with Placido Domingo and Carlos Alvarez, Decca 467096) and Henry Clifford (also with Alvarez, Decca 473937) and brought Merlin to the Real as the centerpiece of his efforts.

The music of Merlin is very uneven, suffering from the lack of a defined language and character, though it contains strokes of true genius. Albeniz tries hard not to sound Spanish, yet in one of the score's finest moments, the ballet in Act III, he cannot help but use an Andalusian flavor to convey erotic tension. De Eusebio conducted eloquently. The heroic passages had brio, and the lyric ones sounded smooth and soft; the ...