El retablo de maese Pedro

El retablo de Maese Pedro and Pulcinella represent – with nods to puppet theatre and crystalline orchestrations inspired in the music prior to Romanticism - two quintessential spectacles which history books termed as Neoclassicism. A hodgepodge  etiquette, with extremely porous boundaries, but which eventually became an authentic lingua franca  during  the interwar period, Or, as well, an open space for musical  languages which were flagrantly opposed, but which shared  that nostalgia for rationality  -  clarity and beauty -  increasingly threatened  by radical ideologies in the extreme along with nationalisms exclusive of different manifestations.

The luminous and carefree universe of the Commedia dell’Arte was the starting point for the ballet with voices  Pucinella, premiering in Paris in 1920, and based on the music - much of it apocryphal -  of  18th century composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi. For his part, Manuel de Falla recreated a quixotic episode in his chamber opera El retablo de Maese Pedro. First seen in Seville in 1923, coinciding with the coup d’état of Primo de Rivera, this score mirrors the sounds of the Spanish Golden Age with a very personal approach.