Company

The premiere of the original version, choreographed by Leonide Massine, was at London’s Alhambra Theatre on 22 July 1919, by Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. The historic impresario, with his great instinct for talent, commissioned Manuel de Falla to rewrite his1917 ballet-pantomime El corregidor y la molinera, created for chamber orchestra. Diaghilev and his young choreographer Leonide Massine attended the premiere in Madrid, since during the First World War and thanks to the help of King Alfonso XIII -whom they regarded as their “godfather”- the Ballets Russes could perform (therefore, survive) in neutral Spain.

Gregorio Martínez Sierra and María Lejárraga had adapted for the theatre the 1874 novel by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, which was based on a popular legend. In 1915, the couple had collaborated with the Cadiz musician in El amor brujo, for Pastora Imperio that Antonia Mercé La Argentina premiered as a ballet in 1925. Falla composed El sombrero de tres picos following Massine’s indications, adapting the scenes to his choreographic idea, just as Tchaikovsky did when he wrote his famous ballets to suit the needs of choreographer Marius Petipa. This is a very important point when discussing authoring, since it is the choreographer who asks the musician for the structure, nuances, and rhythms he/she wants in the score; it is not that he/she finds a ready-made composition and then designs the choreography. 

During his Spanish tours between 1916 and 1918, Leonide Massine had fallen in love with Spanish dance. Not only with flamenco, but with other dances too. He had by his side a local artist hired by Diaghilev so that he could learn from him, Félix Fernández, who is said to have been a spectacular bailaor when he danced alone –the true nature of flamenco dance-, but was not quite as skilled in a choreography, that calls for academic rigour.

Unfortunately, Félix Fernández paid dearly for his inability to adapt to the discipline of a choreography: on seeing that his name did not feature as protagonist of the El sombrero de tres picos when it was premiered in London in 1919, his mind was deeply disturbed and he spent the rest of his life in an asylum in England, until he died in 1941. This is the saddest chapter of the making of El sombrero… In 2004, the Ballet Nacional premiered El loco, ballet based on the story of Félix, with choreography by Javier Latorre, script by Francisco López and music by Mauricio Sotelo and Juan Manuel Cañizares.

With Antonio’s version, El sombrero de tres picos was a successful choreography using the language of Spanish dance. Premiered in 1958, at the Festival Internacional de Música y Danza de Granada, it is with Antonio’s version -as said above- that the Ballet gains its true nature, since Manuel de Falla’s score is a masterpiece in terms of the stylisation of our popular rhythms and melodies.  

 After all, Massine 1919 version, is but a “fantasy” of our dance –as we pointed out above- because even though the Russian choreographer and dancer steeped himself in “everything Spanish” and learnt some steps and forms of our dance, he was not a fully trained artist in Spanish dance and therefore, he often fell into what we could call “fake Spanish”.