Living in London, he composed three operas in collaboration with Money-Coutts (heir to a banking fortune, and Albéniz's sole patron from July 1894 onward), of which Merlin was the most ambitious.

It was intended as the first part of a huge trilogy of Arthurian legends, loosely based on Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur.

It must be hard to sing lines like "When flow'rets of the marigold and daisy are enfolden, and wingless glowmoth stars of love englimmer all the glades" with anything approaching a straight face.

The opera was performed by vocalists with piano accompaniment in 1905, but the full score languished until a truncated version with the text translated into Spanish was staged at the Tívoli Theatre in Barcelona on 18 December 1950.

The complete opera with the original English libretto was premiered in concert form at the Auditorio nacional in Madrid on 20 June 1998,[3] and a studio recording with Plácido Domingo singing the part of King Arthur was made in 2000, conducted by Albeniz-specialist conductor José de Eusebio.