Granada (song)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Granada is an art song for tenor and orchestra by the Mexican composer Agustín Lara about the Spanish city of Granada .

The song was written in 1932 and comes from Lara's Suite española , a cycle of songs about the Spanish cities of Madrid, Granada, Valencia, Toledo, Seville and Murcia as well as the Navarra region, from which all other titles are hardly ever performed. The composer had never been to Spain at the time of writing. It is unclear where his interest in writing songs about unknown cities came from; Mexican critics accused him of a lack of patriotism. In relation to the song Granada , the British Islamic scholar Merryl Wyn Davies points out that Granada has a special connotation for Latin America, because after the fall of Granada in 1492, Christopher Columbus in the surrender of Santa Fe received approval from the Catholic Kings for his voyage of discovery, which took place at The starting signal for the Spanish Conquista of Latin America was given.

Performers

Although the composer Agustín Lara was also known as a singer, there is no recording of his most famous song on the CD compilations of his recordings. Perhaps Lara was aware that his voice lacked the necessary strength for the operatic demands of the song. Lara composed the song for tenor Pedro Vargas , who was the first to record it in 1932. It was interpreted by almost all of the major opera tenors, for example Fritz Wunderlich , Joseph Schmidt , Mario del Monaco and Mario Lanza . The song was on the program in all joint concerts of the three tenors , interpreted alternately by José Carreras (Rome 1990), Plácido Domingo (Los Angeles 1994) and Luciano Pavarotti (Paris 1998). There are also versions from popular music, such as by Frank Sinatra , Frankie Laine , Trini Lopez , Juan Arvizu , John Serry senior or Baccara . Vico Torriani was with his version at the beginning of 1954 on the first place of the German hit parade for four weeks.

text

The original version, in which Lara's own Spanish text is sung, is also the best-known version of the song. Other versions of the text exist in English ( Dorothy Dodd ) and German ( Ralph Maria Siegel ), but have little in common with the original text.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Merryl Wyn Davies: On "Granada" . In: Ziauddin Sardar, Robin Yassin-Kassab (ed.): Reclaiming Al-Andalus (=  Critical Muslim ). tape 6 . C Hurst, 2013, ISBN 978-1-84904-316-8 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed January 12, 2018]).
  2. ^ A b c d Andrew Grant Wood: Agustin Lara: A Cultural Biography . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-989245-7 ( limited preview in Google Book Search)
  3. ↑ Carl Dahlhaus (Ed.): Riemann Musiklexikon . Schott, Mainz 1975.
  4. ^ Carreras, Domingo, Pavarotti, Mehta - In Concert at Discogs
  5. ↑ The 3 Tenors in Concert at Discogs
  6. ↑ The 3 Tenors in Paris at Discogs
  7. ↑ Discography of American Historical Recordings - "Granada" - is the song, recorded in 1932 by Juan Arvizu for Victor Records (# 30705) on uscb.edu (English)
  8. ^ Dot Album Discography, Part 2 (1955-1960). Retrieved January 12, 2018 .