This ballet The Three-cornered Hat was performed for the first time on any stage by the Russian Ballet at the Alhambra, London. Joaquin Turina says (The Chesterian, May, 1920) that the first version of The Three-cornered Hat was produced at the Eslava Theater, Madrid, under the title of El Corregidor y la Molinera. Turina was then conducting this theater’s orchestra. The “pantomime” of de Falla was accompanied by only seventeen players. “The composer was confronted with one great difficulty, and that was to follow musically the action of the play without spoiling the unity of his score. The music therefore continually reflected a certain anxiety on the composer’s part, as if he were trying to disentangle himself, so to speak, from the external network. The transformation of the ‘pantomime’ into a ballet at once cleared away all these difficulties. This is quite natural, for in the new version the action became reduced to a strictly indispensable minimum, and the dances became predominant, those already existing being considerably amplified.”
Turina finds the Miller’s Dance the most interesting “because of its typically Andalusian character, its fascinating rhythm which is like an affirmation of Southern art, and its Moorish character.” In the Final Dance the jota and the folk theme called vito are introduced.
The Daily Telegraph (London, July 24, 1919) said of the ballet:
“Over the whole brisk action is the spirit of frivolous comedy of a kind by no means common only to Spain of the eighteenth century. A young miller and his wife are the protagonists, and if their existence be idyllic in theory, it is extraordinarily strenuous in practice—choreographically. But that is only another way of saying that M. Massine and Mme Karsavina, who enact the couple, are hardly ever off the stage, and that both of them work with an energy and exuberance that almost leave one breathless at moments. The miller and his wife between them, however, would scarcely suffice even for a slender ballet plot. So we have as well an amorous corregidor (or governor), who orders the miller’s arrest so that the way may be cleared for a pleasant little flirtation—if nothing more serious—with the captivating wife. Behold the latter fooling him with a seductive dance, and then evading her admirer with such agility that, in his pursuit of her, he tumbles over a bridge into the mill stream. But, as this is comedy, and not melodrama, the would-be lover experiences nothing worse than a wetting, and the laugh, which is turned against him, is renewed when, having taken off some of his clothes to dry them and gone to rest on the miller’s bed, his presence is discovered by the miller himself, who, in revenge, goes off in the intruder’s garments after scratching a message on the wall to the effect that ‘Your wife is no less beautiful than mine!’ Thereafter a ‘gallimaufry of gambols’ and—curtain!”
CÉSAR
FRANCK
(Born at Liège, Belgium, December 10, 1822; died at Paris, November 8, 1890)
What a characteristic figure is this artist of the nineteenth century, whose profile stands out so boldly from the surroundings in which he lived! An artist of another age, whose work makes one think of that of the great Bach! Franck went through this life as a dreamer, seeing little or nothing of that which passed about him, thinking only of his art, and living only for it. True artists are subject to this kind of hypnotism—the inveterate workers, who find the recompense of their labor in the accomplished fact, and an incomparable joy in the pure and simple toil of each day. They have no need to search for the echo in the crowd.
When Ysaye and Lachaume introduced Franck’s violin sonata (in Boston) in 1895; when these and others introduced the magnificent piano quintet in 1898, leading musicians of this city shook wise heads and said with an air of finality: “This will never do.” The string quartet was only tolerated, endured because it was produced at a Kneisel concert, and at that time the Kneisels could do no wrong. The Wild Huntsman, produced here by Theodore Thomas in 1898, was looked on as the work of an eccentric and theatrical Frenchman.
When Mr. Gericke produced the symphony in 1899, the storm broke loose. There were letters of angry protest. A leading critic characterized the symphony as “dismal.” Several subscribers to the concerts called it “immoral” and vowed they would not attend any concert at which music by Franck was to be played.
Nor did Franck fare better for a time in New York. Even the broad-minded James Huneker dismissed him as a sort of Abbé Liszt, now in the heavily scented boudoir, now with self-conscious devotion in the church. Franck in the boudoir! Poor “Père” Franck!