THE MUSICAL PERSONALITY OF DON QUIXOTE: MANUEL DE FALLA’S EL RETABLO DE MAESE PEDRO

LOES DOMMERING-VAN RONGEN

A puppet opera based on Cervantes’ Don Quixote “You will remember that through this work I wished to give a devout homage to the fame of Cervantes, for whom each day I feel an ever- deepening admiration”: so wrote Manuel de Falla to Adolfo Salazar, the music critic of El Sol and a major proponent of modern Spanish music, about his puppet opera El retablo de Maese Pedro (Master Peter’s Puppet Show), which was completed in 1923.1 This devotion was consistent with his personality, according to a portrait of him sketched by the writer Ramón Pérez de Ayala:

Falla is a bit of a monk; a Cartusian due to his seclusion; a Benedictine due to his regularity; a Franciscan because of his beautiful (pure) perception, of blessed ecstasy in the face of God’s works; a Carmelite because of the refined purity of his music. He reminds me of that other Carmelite, St John of the Cross.2

In all humility, without directly looking for success, this composer gave birth to a small oeuvre. This includes four music theatre works, namely the lyrical drama in verististic style La vida breve (The Brief Life, 1905), the ballet El amor brujo (Love, the Magician, 1914-1925), the pantomime El corregidor y la molinera (The Governor and the

1 Letter from Falla to Salazar, 1924, AMF no. 7569, cited by Elena Torres Clemente, Las óperas de Manuel de Falla, Madrid, 2007, 291: “Recordará Vd. que con este trabajo he querido rendir un devoto homenaje a la gloria de Cervantes, por el que cada día siente màs profunda admiración.” 2 Ramón Pérez de Ayala, Amistades y Recuerdos, Barcelona, 1961, 84 : “Falla es algo frailecito; cartujo por su recogimiento; benedictino por su asiduidad; franciscano por su mirada limpia (‘limpida’), de éxtasis deleitable ante las obras de Dios; carmelita por la pureza exquisita de su música. Hace pensar en el otro carmelita, San Juan de la Cruz.” The portrait originally appeared in La Prensa, 10 August 1941. 360 Loes Dommering-van Rongen

Miller’s Wife, 1916), which he reworked in 1919 for the Ballets Russes as El sombrero de tres picos (The Three-Cornered Hat), and finally El retablo de Maese Pedro (the unfinished scenic cantata Atlántida was completed by E. Halffter). The chamber opera in one movement El retablo de Maese Pedro, which only lasts thirty minutes, is a dramatization of an episode in Cervantes’ Don Quijote (Don Quixote).3 In Chapter 26 of Part II of the novel, which was published in 1615, the story tells of an itinerant puppeteer, Master Peter, who has set up his puppet theatre at an inn. A young boy, referred to as the trujamán (“interpreter”), takes on the role of the storyteller during the performance. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are amongst the spectators. The puppet show enacts an old Carolingian romance (ballad) about Melisendra, the daughter of Charlemagne, who was abducted by the Moors and held captive in the Spanish city of Sansueña (Saragossa). An enamoured Moor beleaguers her and pays for a stolen kiss with corporal punishment imposed by his king Marsilio. In the meantime Melisendra’s husband, Don Gayferos, has crossed the Pyrenees to free his wife. As the couple flee, the Moors follow in hot pursuit. Don Quixote is so engrossed by the show that he can no longer distinguish it from reality. He jumps to his feet, draws his sword and attacks the Moorish puppets. Manuel de Falla wrote the libretto for this opera himself and adhered faithfully to Cervantes’ narrative by using the text of this chapter of the novel verbatim and only omitting parts of it where necessary. He changed the outcome by ending with an aria based on his own compilation of quotes from various other parts of the novel. How did the libretto come about and how did the composer refashion a chapter of a novel into text, stage directions and music? These are the questions I will be discussing in this essay. In doing so, I will place Don Quixote at centre stage because the composer gave musical form to Don Quixote’s personality in the aria. He presented Cervantes’ protagonist as someone who strives after the knightly ideal and tries to give form to this within a fantasy world of his own creation. His life is a role play. As Shakespeare writes in As You Like It: “All the world’s a stage, / And all the men and women merely players.” This is emphasized not only by the libretto and the music, but also by the technique of theatre within theatre used by Falla.

3 Miguel de Cervantes Saaveedra, El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha, 1605-1615.