L'Heure espagnole

Comédie musicale en un acte arrangé pour orchestre de chambre de Klaus Simon (2013)

Poème de Franc-Nohain

L’Heure espagnole is set in Toledo around 1850. The local watchmaker Torquemada has been instructed to service all clocks in the town hall every week, and his wife Concepción takes advantage of the free hour to amuse herself with one of her two lovers. The routine is upset, however, when the two men and a new attractive third man threaten to meet each other, further complicated by the husband’s sudden appearance at home. Klaus Simon has created an arrangement of this work for chamber orchestra, premiered at the Opéra Comique in Paris in 1911, which completely retains the temperament of the music and its Spanish colouring.

Edition: Performance material

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Description

The single-act comédie musicale focuses on the extravagant Concepción, the wife of a watchmaker, who makes secret assignations with a sequence of lovers in her husband’s shop. Maurice Ravel’s rich musical imagination is displayed both in his creation of the sounds of clocks at the beginning of the opera and the influences of Spanish music, particularly vivid in the final Habanera. Alongside the parodistic slant of the libretto, the quotation technique and the concealed operatic parody with which the composer was targeting the Dramelyrique of Debussy and Massenet is reminiscent of the world of operetta. The comic-erotic single act work which in its day was described by music critics as ‘musical pornography’ for the insinuating ambiguity of both the score and the plot is now considered one of the most charming one-act operas in the repertoire.

Orchestral Cast

1 (auch Picc.) · 1 (auch Engl. Hr.) · 1 (auch Bassklar.) · 1 (auch Kfg.) - 1 · 1 · 0 · 0 - S. (Glsp. · Xyl. · Röhrengl. · Trgl. · Beck. · Schlittengl. · Schellentr. · provenz. Tr. · gr. Tr. m. Beck. · Sprungfeder · Peitsche · Kast. · Rassel) (2 Spieler) - Hfe. · Akk. · Klav. (auch Cel.) - Str. (mind. 1 · 1 · 1 · 1 · 1 [Fünfsaiter])

Cast

Concepción, Ehefrau des Torquemada · Sopran - Gonzalve, Bakkalaureus · Tenor - Torquemada, Uhrmachermeister · Tenorbuffo - Ramiro, ein Maultiertreiber · Bariton - Don Inigo Gomez, Bankier · Bassbuffo

More Information

Title:

L'Heure espagnole

Comédie musicale en un acte arrangé pour orchestre de chambre de Klaus Simon (2013)

Poème de Franc-Nohain

Language:

French

Edition:

Performance material

Publisher/Label:

Schott Music

Year of composition:

1907 - 1909

World Premiere:

September 12, 2013 · Freiburg (D)
E-Werk
Conductor: Klaus Simon
Original staging: Joachim Rathke · Costumes: Heike Mondschein · Set design: Heike Mondschein
Organizer: Gemeinschaftsproduktion der Young Opera Company mit dem E-Werk Freiburg und der Reihe „Musica Nova“ in Reutlingen
(scenic)