Spanish Wit in Cosmopolitan Dress: On de Falla's El sombrero de tres picos
El sombrero de tres picos: Manuel de Falla (1876–1946), composer of El sombrero de tres picos. Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
El sombrero de tres picos is two things at once: an authentic Spanish festival of dance and an advanced modernist score. In his latest essay, artistic director Vegard Nilsen returns to the 1919 Ballets Russes premiere in London — Ansermet, Massine, Picasso, de Falla — where folklore and modernism arrived hand in hand, neither letting go of the other. For the conductor, he writes, the work is at once an invitation to let loose and a reminder that he may not. On the opening "¡Olé!", the miller's farruca, and the closing jota.
