Terry Blain thrills to a mix of flamenco and classical traditions as he explores the finest recordings of de Falla’s characterful 1925 ballet
The work
‘Life becomes more intense, the loves and hates of other worlds pass before our eyes, and we feel whatever is highest and lowest in ourselves.’ These words, recording the effect created by the flamenco dancer Pastora Imperio, evoke the potently suggestive world of Spain’s native art form, and its ability to unlock deep-seated wells of primal impulse and emotion.
In 1914, Imperio forged an unlikely link with a composer whose classical training appeared to place him well beyond the boundaries of the popular flamenco tradition: Manuel de Falla. Would he, she wondered, be interested in creating a new work for her to sing and dance in?
De Falla was, it turned out, more than merely interested. Like many, he was already in thrall to Imperio’s spell-binding artistry, and intent on using the rich folk music heritage of his country to inspire a new, distinctive national classical style. ‘It has occasionally been asserted that we have no traditions,’ de Falla wrote of Spain. ‘But in our dance and our rhythm we possess the strongest traditions that none can obliterate.’
That is the spirit in which the original version of de Falla’s one-act ballet El Amor Brujo (‘Love, the Magician’) was created. Based on songs Pastora Imperio and her mother had sung to de Falla, and folk tales they had told him, the first version of El Amor Brujo was cast as a ‘gitanería’ (‘gypsy entertainment’), with songs, dances and spoken dialogue.
The libretto, largely by the writer María Martínez Sierra, centred on the efforts of a woman, Candelas, to cast off the baleful influence of her deceased husband’s ghost and marry a new lover. De Falla’s music, scored for a small chamber ensemble, was all newly written, though closely modelled on the ‘cante jondo’ (‘deep song’) style he had heard from the Imperio women.
The premiere of this initial version of El Amor Brujo was in Madrid on 15 April 1915, and de Falla’s hopes for it were high. ‘I have tried to “live” it as a gypsy, to feel it deeply,’ he said a few hours before curtain-up. ‘And I have used in it no other elements than those which I believed to express the soul of that race.’
But although both Imperio and members of her family were in the cast, El Amor Brujo Mark I was not successful. ‘The gypsies on the stage felt the music to be
