The spanish hour
| Work data | |
|---|---|
| Title: | The spanish hour |
| Original title: | L'heure espagnole |
| Shape: | Musical comedy |
| Original language: | French |
| Music: | Maurice Ravel |
| Libretto : | Franc-Nohain |
| Premiere: | May 19, 1911 |
| Place of premiere: | Opéra-Comique , Paris |
| Playing time: | about 50 minutes |
| Place and time of the action: | Toledo in the 18th century |
| people | |
The Spanish Hour (French original title: L'heure espagnole ) is an opera in one act by Maurice Ravel . The libretto wrote Franc-Nohain . The artists themselves called their work a “musical comedy” and it was premiered on May 19, 1911 at the Opéra-Comique in Paris .
action
The movement is set in a watchmaker's shop in Toledo , in the 18th century.
Torquemada runs a thriving watchmaking business. The city administration has commissioned him to maintain and wind all the clocks in the town hall on a specific day every week. Torquemada always needs an hour for this, which his wife Concepción uses to alternately meet her two lovers Gonzalvo, a beautiful spirit, and Gomez, a banker, in the watchmaker's shop for a lunchtime.
Torquemada is about to go to town hall for his weekly duty when a customer walks into the shop. It's the muleteer Ramiro. Torquemada explains that he has no time at the moment and asks him to wait in the store until he is back.
Concepción of course does not like this at all, after all, she is eagerly waiting for her lover Gonzalvo. As soon as her husband has left the house, he enters the shop and Concepción tries to get rid of Ramiro. When he makes no move to leave the shop, she has another plan: She asks him a favor: a couple of the large grandfather clocks in the shop need to be brought to the apartment on the first floor. To their delight, Ramiro agrees to take on this difficult task. As he carries the first grandfather clock upstairs, its second admirer, the banker Don Inigo Gomez, suddenly appears. Now good advice is expensive, after all, the two lovers should not meet here. She quickly orders Gomez to hide in one of the grandfather clocks. Ramiro calls out to her that he has worn the wrong watch upstairs and that he should bring it back downstairs. So Ramiro is busy with the difficult task of constantly carrying a grandfather clock, in which one of the lovers is located, up or down the stairs.
Concepción can't believe that Ramiro seems to do his job so effortlessly. What a man! Gonzalvo and Gomez are just sloppy against him. So she starts flirting really hard with Ramiro. She puts the grandfather clocks with the trapped lovers back in the shop, takes Ramiro's hand and pulls him into her bedroom.
Suddenly the host returns and discovers the two men in the grandfather clocks. These didn't fall on your head. When asked by Torquemada what this theater meant, both of them declare that they are customers and that they wanted to inspect the objects of their desires very carefully before rolling good money on the counter. Torquemada is also not suspicious of his wife and Ramiro. The finale of the opera finally allows all five to sing together for the first and last time in the work.
music
Ravel's great fondness for Spanish coloring in music - he made the famous Boléro and Rhapsodie espagnole , for example - is also evident in this opera. The quintet of the finale, for example, is a fiery habanera . In the short prelude, the “tick-tock” of the clockwork dominates and the composition develops from the different chimes and “cuckoo calls” at the hour that has just begun and leads to the location of the action. The audience rejected the work at the premiere. The music critics spoke of "musical pornography".
Web links
- L'heure espagnole : Sheet music and audio files in the International Music Score Library Project
- Action by de at Opera-Guide target page due to URL change currently not available
- Work data for The Spanish Hour based on MGG with discography at Operone