Del Monaco revolutionizes Falla

At first sight, it looks like a necklace of Spanish customs, stereotypes and clichés strung together with gypsies, blacksmiths, pocket knives, jealousy and death. However, with the story of this rural drama by Carlos Fernández Shaw which Manuel de Falla premiered in Nice in 1913, flows an opera that is not only dramatically intense, more so because of its striking brevity, but one that is also musically exhilarating. In this production, conceived for the Palau de les Arts of Valencia, stage director Giancarlo del Monaco, uses an abstract scenography -that critics have considered “ revolutionary”- to do away with geographical references and folkloric elements. The work is freed from the bonds of Spanish cultural nationalism strongly rooted in Andalusia to become universal: Del Monaco transforms the main character, Salud, into a complex personality similar to opera heroines of dramas of the times like the Jenůfa of Janáček, who will also see this season in Sevilla. In his search for the “dark, profound, and chaotic” soul of La vida breve, Del Monaco, puts the love drama of the story in tension with the social drama of its location, accentuating the influence of passion and fatality.

Lucas Macías, the excellent oboist and conductor from the Andalusian province of Huelva, makes his opera debut at the Maestranza to lead a cast headed by soprano Ainhoa Arteta and tenor Alejandro Roy.

One of the great Spanish operas -if not the best- comes to the Maestranza in a stage production which shows us a “new Falla”. Few dramaturges as the brilliant Giancarlo del Monaco, with such close ties to Spain, could provide a new insight to La vida breve. The Maestranza applauds the occasion.

Libretto by Carlos Fernández Shaw. Premiered in French on an adaptation by Paul Millet at the Casino Municipal in Nice on 1 April 1913.