Customer Reviews

Falla: La Vida Breve (The Short Life) [Lopez-Cobos, Cincinnati Symphony]

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One of the most attractive aspects of Spanish national culture is its mass of internal contradictions. Spaniards want to hang on to their traditions and be modern at the same time. They are simultaneously regionalists, nationalists and internationalists. They are desperate to be taken seriously in the wider world, but determined that the world should take them on their own terms.

This two-sided approach to life permeates Spanish art. Simultaneously joyful and tragic, bloodthirsty and comic, conservative and experimental, it constantly refuses to be categorised.

As probably the greatest of Spain's classical composers (although some would place Albeniz or the tragic figure of Granados above him), Manuel de Falla encapsulates all I have been talking about. The possessor of a giant intellect, reserved, severe, almost priestly in his demeanour, he wrote some of the most flamboyant and celebratory music ever committed to a formal orchestral score. And while he was a proud musical nationalist who may have done more than anyone to explore Hispanic folk influence within a classical compositional framework, he is unquestionably in the late-romantic mainstream and the common ground he shares with composers from Wagner to Bartok is striking.

La Vida Breve is a short (about an hour) opera that employs numerous sounds and themes from the Spanish flamenco style of folk music. Flamenco itself is an enormous and diverse genre that in a typically Spanish way spans both flamboyant dancing and dark, Moorish-tinged soul singing. De Falla's opera represents an ambitious and technically brilliant development and elaboration of the traditional style of flamenco story-telling called "zarzuela". It tells the simple "two worlds" story of a wealthy man (Paco) who seduces a gypsy girl (Salud) and promises to marry her. He then goes back on his word and marries a member of his own caste. Salud gatecrashes the wedding telling of her heartbreak, and dies at Paco's feet. The End.

That's virtually all there is to it, and some critics have accused de Falla of a lack of drama particularly in the finale. This is to betray a lack of understanding of Spanish culture, in other words, to look at this archetypal Spanish work through jaded eyes accustomed to the Byzantine plot twists and melodramatic revenge denouements of Italian opera. As I've said in a different context elsewhere, it's like looking for Hamlet in a haiku. La Vida Breve is structurally as delicate as a butterfly, and it runs a great gamut of breathtaking soundscapes from sombre orchestral interludes to mighty choral anthems to dance tunes to folksong.

The definitive performance on record from a historic viewpoint was conducted by Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos and featured the great Spanish soprano, Victoria de los Angeles, both of whom had an uncanny grasp of the local colour. However, the sixties mannerisms and sound (although well transferred) of the de Burgos/de los Angeles version will not please everybody, and in any event it does not seem to feature in Amazon's U.S. catalogue. And given that this great but neglected work is rarely performed outside Spain, every new studio recording is a labour of love. Whichever version you get, you are unlikely to be disappointed.

I am ashamed to say that I have owned this opera for over four years, but just began to listen to it attentively this past June. If your are willing to be patient, this opera will flower for you. It begins with eighteen very slow minutes in which some haunting but fleeting melodies will bubble to the surface. The chorus and soloists relish in the lushly evocative Spanish phrases. Manuel Cid as "the voice" in the distance will captivate you with his lyricism. Things begin to get serious at the Intermezzo and continue at a higher and somewhat cheerier voltage until the final dance. Don't bother with the trivial plot, buy this CD for the passion that clearly went into creating the music.

This opera written by Falla,another outstanding Spaniard brings all the Spanish flavor of Andalucia. Enjoyed for the first time in Madrid, it was an unforgetable experience.