Musical Performance

Dances from The Three-cornered Hat The Three-cornered Hat is that rare thing in ballet, a sexy farce. A buffoon of an official (the hat is his badge of office) fancies the wife of a fanatically jealous miller. He has the miller arrested to clear the way for love, and the miller’s wife dances seductively to lead him on, tumbles him in the river, then partly undresses him to dry him — at which point the miller comes back home …

Falla’s score is recorded complete (and is well worth exploring), but he made a separate suite of three short dances. They take us straight to the heart of sunny Spain. The Neighbours’ Dance is graceful and seductive (the women swaying while the lip-smacking official spies and drools). The Miller’s Dance alternates a wailing, Moorish tune and ever-quickening, flamenco stamping. The Final Dance is a jota: a whirling dance in three-time, with everyone mocking the soaked official as the orchestra supplies guitar-like strumming and clacking castanets. The music gets faster and faster, a rush of sound as heady as a cocktail. This may be picture-postcard Spain, but it sets every foot tapping in even the solemnest concert hall.

THE RUSSIAN BALLET Falla wrote The Three-cornered Hat in 1919 for Diaghilev’s Russian Ballet company (already known for such exotic dazzlers as Sheherazade and The Firebird). His collaborators included three of the century’s most glittering theatre talents: Picasso designed the ballet (basing it on pictures by Goya, no less) ; Massine did the choreography — and conceived the part of the Miller, alternately brooding and stupendously athletic, for himself; and the wife was played by Karsavina, the most elfin, but most seductive, of all Diaghilev’s harem of leading ladies.

FALLA Manuel de Falla (1876-1946) was fascinated by Andalusian folk music, with its Arab-inspired tunes and its stiff-backed, rhythmic flamenco dances, named for the flamingoes whose flounce and strut they imitate. He wrote this kind of local colour into songs, piano pieces, choral works, concertos, and above all three gorgeous stage works : The Three-cornered Hat, Love the Magician and La vida breve (`Life is Short’).

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