Spain Manuel de Falla, El retablo de Maese Pedro (live performance model): Mahler Chamber Orchestra / Pablo Heras Casado (conductor). Teatro Real, Madrid, 18.2.2023. (JMI)
Cast:
Airam Hernández – Maese Pedro
José Antonio López – Don Quixote
Héctor López de Ayala Uribe – Trujamán
El retablo de Maese Pedro is a brief opera, made for a puppet theater. Based on a passage from Don Quixote the place he attends the Maese Pedro theatre, all of it ends badly when the Ingenious Hidalgo Quixote confuses actuality and his creativeness.
The work was written for the Marquise de Polignac in Paris, in whose home it was first carried out in 1923. A number of months earlier it had been completed in a live performance model in Seville.
It just isn’t offered very regularly, even in Spanish theaters, though I’ve seen it in Madrid in a staged model, each at Teatro Real and at Teatro de la Zarzuela. If reality be advised, it does probably not work in a live performance model the place one loses the puppet theater and the dolls that symbolize the heroes.
The musical path was entrusted to Pablo Heras Casado, who has grow to be probably the most worldwide of Spanish conductors, as evidenced by the truth that this summer season he will likely be in Wagner’s orchestra pit on the Bayreuth Festival. His conducting was good, though I’ve discovered it tough for leaders to be notably shiny with this opera. The Mahler Chamber Orchestra did effectively.
The three soloists are Maese Pedro, Don Quixote and Trujamán. The first one is the proprietor of the inn and theater, the second doesn’t require an introduction and the third narrates the plot of the puppets.
Maese Pedro was interpreted accurately by tenor Airam Hernández, and baritone José Antonio López as Don Quixote confirmed his sonorous voice. Trujamán was carried out by Héctor López de Ayala Uribe.
The opera came about within the second a part of the live performance. The first half of this system supplied the Concerto for Harpsichord by Manuel de Falla and the Pulcinella Suite by Igor Stravinsky.
José M. Irurzun