Michael Nyman - Facing Goya [CD 1] (2002)

Facing Goya (2000) is an opera in four acts by Michael Nyman on a libretto by Victoria Hardie. It is an expansion of their one-act opera called Vital Statistics from 1987, dealing with such subjects as physiognomy and its practitioners, and also incorporates a musical motif from Nyman's art song, "The Kiss", inspired by a Paul Richards painting. Nyman also considers the work thematically tied to his other works, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, The Ogre, and Gattaca, though he does not quote any of these musically, save a very brief passage of the latter. It was premièred at the Auditorio de Galicia, Santiago de Compostela, Spain on 3 August 2000. The revision with the cast heard on the album premiered at the Badisches Straatstheater in Karlsruhe, Germany, on October 19, 2002. Vital Statistics has been withdrawn. The Santiago version included more material from Vital Statistics. The opera was most recently performed at the 2014 Spoleto Festival USA, located in Charleston, South Carolina.

A recording was released in 2002. It is Michael Nyman's 44th album. Alexander Balanescu left the band during the recording of this album, and his concertmaster seat awarded to Gabrielle Lester, who previously recorded with the band on La Sept (1989). Nyman's own label, MN Music, reissued the opera with a cover featuring his own photograph of a mass of dolls wrapped in plastic, in 2011. That edition contains a third disc with excerpts of Man and Boy: Dada and Love Counts.