CANTE JONDO, PUPPETS AND DON QUIXOTE
Along with Federico García Lorca, Miguel Cerón and others, Manuel de Falla moved heaven and earth during the first few months of 1922 in the hope of rescuing “primitive Andalusian song” and bringing it to the Plaza de los Aljibes in the Alhambra for two evenings (13 and 14 June). The atmosphere of those starry and rainy evenings was described in a multitude of newspaper articles with eloquent statements such as that of “Galerín” in the Seville daily El Liberal: “Here we have seen the rarest and most fanciful silk shawls in the world”; or, referring to the overwhelming sense of expectation: “A great hush fell on the square. Four thousand people all silenced – and two thousand of them were women! … What better reception could there be?”25[25] El Liberal. Seville, 19 June 1922. Also in El Defensor de Granada. Granada, 21 June 1922.
During the first half of 1923, Falla’s work revolved around Miguel de Cervantes and puppets – twice over. On 6 January, a children’s puppet show was put on at the García Lorca family home in Granada by Federico García Lorca, Hermenegildo Lanz and Manuel de Falla, who provided musical accompaniment to the three works staged (one of which was Cervantes’s theatrical interlude Los dos habladores), including, among other pieces, instrumental arrangements of an old villancico and one of the Cantigas of Alfonso the Wise. Francisco García Lorca recorded his memories of these pieces in Federico y su mundo:
During the first half of 1923, Falla’s work revolved around Miguel de Cervantes and puppets – twice over. On 6 January, a children’s puppet show was put on at the García Lorca family home in Granada by Federico García Lorca, Hermenegildo Lanz and Manuel de Falla, who provided musical accompaniment to the three works staged (one of which was Cervantes’s theatrical interlude Los dos habladores), including, among other pieces, instrumental arrangements of an old villancico and one of the Cantigas of Alfonso the Wise. Francisco García Lorca recorded his memories of these pieces in Federico y su mundo:
So as to make the music sound old-fashioned, Falla covered the strings of our grand piano with tissue paper. After various modifications, and to the composer’s delight, it sounded rather like a harpsichord26[26] GARCÍA LORCA, Francisco. Federico y su mundo. Madrid, Alianza, 3rd edn., 1981, p. 274..
The experience was followed by one of the milestones in Falla’s output, a work in which Cervantes and puppets again played a part: El retablo de maese Pedro, the fruit of a commission from the Princess de Polignac. This musical and theatrical adaptation of two chapters from Don Quixote was first performed on 25 June 1923 in the Princess’s palace in Paris, with sets and puppets designed and created by the composer’s young artist friends, Manuel Ángeles Ortiz, Hermenegildo Lanz and Hernando Viñes. The premiere was attended by the poets, musicians and painters who comprised the exclusive court of the Princess de Polignac. Five days later, Corpus Barga published a report in El Sol with verbal portraits of some of those present: Paul Valéry, “the poet of the day, making gestures like a shipwrecked man drowning in the waves of feminine shoulders”; Stravinsky, “a mouse among the cats”; and Pablo Picasso, “in evening dress, and mobbed by everybody, [who] seems as though he is resting in a corner with his hat pulled down over one eyebrow”27[27] El Sol. Madrid, 30 June 1923..
