El amor brujo

• El amor brujo (“Love the Magician: Andalusian Gypsy Tale”)¹ was originally a zarzuela theater work (Falla called it a gitanería, “gypsy revel”² or “gypsy ballet”³) incorporating singing and dance, which premiered in 1905.
  • Zarzuela [pronunciation] is a Spanish theater genre incorporating singing and spoken dialogue. These pieces usually incorporated popular Spanish music styles.⁴ Falla wrote a lot of these, esp. early in his career.⁵
• Falla revised this work into a traditional ballet in 1916-17.⁶
• Synopsis
• El amor brujo was unusual in its time for two reasons:⁷
  • It offered an unexpected synthesis of authentic Roma (“Gypsy”) music and symphonic music (in fact, the Romani singer Pastora Imperio performed in the premiere. She did not read music and yet Falla said she learned her part like a “consummate solfègist.”)
  • The work’s depiction of Romani (“Gypsy”) characters, especially women, was much more nuanced than the stereotypical portrayals common at the time (Romani women had usually been depicted as seducers, cf. Carmen, or witches, cf. Azucena in Verdi’s Trovatore).

Ritual Fire Dance

• The subtitle of this movement is “pour chasser les mauvais esprits”: “to chase evil spirits.”⁸ In the story, Candelas performs this dance along with religious ritual to help drive away the ghost of her former lover.⁹

1. Manuel de Falla, El Amor Brujo and El Sombrero de Tres Picos for Solo Piano (New York: Dover, 2005), 1.
2. Carol A. Hess, “Falla (y Matheu), Manuel de,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed September 24, 2019, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000009266.
3. Carol A. Hess, Manuel de Falla and Modernism in Spain, 1898-1936 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 53.
4. Harvard Dictionary of Music, 4^th ed., s.v. “Zarzuela” (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003).
5. Hess, “Falla (y Matheu), Manuel de,” Grove Music Online.
6. Ibid.
7. Falla, El Amor Brujo and El Sombrero de Tres Picos for Solo Piano, xi.
8. Ibid., 16.
9. Richard E. Rodda, “El Amor Brujo: About the Work,” The Kennedy Center, accessed September 24, 2019, https://www.kennedy-center.org/artist/composition/4548.