Manuel de Falla The Three-cornered Hat: Music for Dance
(1876-1946)
Both in Paris and in Spain, where the Ballet Russe sought refuge from war-torn France in 1916, its impresario Sergey Diaghilev tried several times to persuade Manuel de Falla to follow the example of Debussy, Ravel and other Western European composers in contributing to the company's repertory. One suggestion was to make use of Falla's Nights in the Gdrdens ofSpain for piano and orchestra and, although biographical sources say Falla was reluctant, a previously unknown letter from him in the Serge Lifar collection sold at a London auction in 1984 confirms that he supported the idea, but it was overtaken by what became The Three-cornered Hat.
This was derived from an 1874 novel by Don Antonio Pedro de Alarcon, El Jombrero de tres picoJ, which was itself based on an old Spanish folk-tale, 'The Corregidor and the Miller's Wife'. A scenario was worked-up by Falla and the dramatist Martfnez Sierra, first as a mime-play staged at Madrid in 1917 with incidental music for a small orchestra. Diaghilev liked what he saw and heard, and commissioned the full-scale ballet, premi~red at London's Alhambra Theatre on 22 July 1919. In a distinguished artistic collaboration, the choreography was by Leonid Massine; the designs by Pablo Picasso; the conductor was Ernest Ansermet and the roles of the Miller and his Wife were danced by Massine and Tamara Karsavina, with Leon Woizikowski as the Corregidor (Magistrate) whose three-cornered hat is his badge of offrce.
The Corregidor's ill-fated attempts to flirt with the Miller's beautiful Wife is the basis of the comedy (Hugo Wolf and Riccardo Zandonai composed operas on the same subject), and Falla made conscious use of several regional folk-tunes and dances to characterise his narrative. A short Introduction was added in London so that the audience could admire Picasso's drop-curtain (portraying a moment at a corrida (bull-fight); the curtain now hangs in a New York restaurant), while a discant voice sings a warning that the Devil may soon be around:
Casadita, casadita,
cierra con tranca la puerta,
Que aunque el diablo est~ dormido,
a lo mejor se dispierta.
Little wife, Iittle wife,
close the door with a bolt!
For though the devil be asleep,
he's the more likely to awake.
After the curtain rises on a scene outside a mill, with a nearby bridge over the stream, a phrase of Murcian folk-song in the opening bars identifies the Miller as a southerner, while a hint of the jota soon after suggests his Wife is a northerner from Navarre.
A pompous bassoon heralds the Corregidor's procession. He is struck by the Wife's beauty but the time is not propitious, and he returns alone moments later while she is dancing afandango, the Wife having told her husband to hide and see how she treats irnportunate suitors. This she does by teasing the unwelcome visitor with a bunch of grapes, to music like an old-fashioned minuet, causing the Corregidor to fall over and lose his dignity. After he totters away discomfited, the Miller and his Wife joyfully f resume the andango to end the ballet's firsc scene.
Scene 2 moves forward to evening, St John's (Midsummer) Eve in fact, when friends come around to drink wine and dance seguidi/las ('Neighbours' Dance'). The Miller next contributes a flamenco-like farruca, introduced by a solo horn, another late
