Milenda' s Opera paper

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8ZFlx8jRjo

Milenda Clark

Professor Roundtreee

Opera Research Paper

Art 211

9/26/17

For this opera assignment, I chose I’heure espagnole by Ravel. For this opera, which translates to “The Spanish Hour”, Ravel merged the Italian opera buffa genre with French mockery, purposefully setting this play in Spain.  The cast includes: Torquemada, Concepcion, Gonzales, Ramiro, and Don Inigo. It is a comedy about a sexually frustrated wife, Concepcion, who enjoys one day to herself.  One of her husband’s, Torquemada, duties as town clockmaker is to do maintenance work on the town’s clocks. The comedy begins with introducing Torquemada opening his shop and meeting his first customer Ramiro, who needs his clock fixed as it is a family heirloom. However, Concepcion is not about to let Ramiro ruin her “holiday”; she quickly rushes Torquemada out the door. Concepcion then busies Ramiro, who insists on waiting for her husband’s return, with moving clocks in and out of her room. While Torquemada is away, the audience is introduced to Gonzales, a poet and lover of Concepcion as well as Don Inigo, a banker who is infatuated with Concepcion despite her turning him down many times.  Throughout the play both Gonzales and Inigo end up hiding in a clock and are carried by Ramiro into Concepcion’s room, but both turn out to be inadequate lovers. Concepcion finally sets her eyes on Ramiro who obligingly follows her to her room.

I can only imagine that women in Ravel’s audience would have gotten a kick out of his one-act play. France during this time 1904-1911 when this play was originally shown was still supporting traditional gender roles. Traditional meaning the family structure was still patriarchal, the man is in charge. Maybe the women in the audience would have been able to relate to the idea of it being a “holiday” when the husband is away at work. Maybe they had a few lovers they were keeping secret from their husband as adultery was still punishable. I am not so sure the husbands would have been so amused by the naïve, aged Torquemada, portrayed as kind faithful husband being cheated on by his factitious wife. Perhaps it made them a little more suspicious of their wives.

For my own personal reaction, I was rather underwhelmed by the set and the music. I also found the characters to be too over-the-top almost becoming caricature’s. The plot itself was also rather repetitive of Ramiro carrying the clocks up and down the stairs. As a woman, I found Concepcion to be rather annoying and unrealistic, but maybe this is due to the underdevelopment of many of the characters. Had we learned more about Torquemada and his shortcomings, I might have been able to better tolerate Concepcion’s actions. A lot of the humor was missed on me, but perhaps for the audience of the time it was funnier. I honestly couldn’t tell if Ravel was mocking the Spanish or paying homage to them. I found the subtle digs, especially with Ramiro’s character, “mule-drivers can’t hold conversation,” or something along those lines to be rather odd. I also didn’t understand Torquemada’s full role, as he seemed to control the shop with some type of magical element. Apparently critics of Ravel’s time would agree with me for the most part. It made them uncomfortable as it allowed “feministic interpolation”. I’m sure this wasn’t helped by the fact the Concepcion was the lead role in the opera. The opera did eventually have success despite its rocky beginning.

There was a very minimalistic amount of technology used in this opera. At the very beginning, Torquemada is lifted in the air using simply pulley system with chair and a rope is pulled to lift chair in the air. There are fake machines in the shop, but they are played by humans painted to look more animatronic. There was a moving stage built into the set as well so that characters could appear into the shop without having to walk in, almost like a freezeframe until they were on set in their que spot, then they moved. There were also moving elements built into the set such as the clock at the top of the shop that turned.

If I was adapting l'heure espagnole by Ravel into a video game I would play around with the idea of Concepcion hiding her lovers from her husband in the clocks. There are various scenarios to work with. It could be timed levels where Concepcion must hide all her lovers before time runs out and Torquemada returns home. I could also add difficulty by including the Ramiro aspect, where Concepcion must keep Ramiro busy moving clocks while hiding her lovers in them without him seeing. The difficulty would increase each level. There will be more lovers and fewer clocks or less time. Two of the lovers would obviously be inspired by Don Inigo and Gonzales, a banker and a poet. The background music could be inspired by the opera music used by Ravel.

Work Cited:

Maddocks, Fiona. “L'heure espagnole/L'enfant et les sortilèges; BBC Prom 33 – review.” Theguardian.com, Guardian News and Media , 11 Aug. 2011. Accessed 25 Sept. 2017.

Dubins, Jerry, et al. "L'Heure Espagnole. Don Quichotte À Dulcinée." Fanfare: The Magazine for Serious Record Collectors, vol. 39, no. 6, Jul/Aug2016, pp. 386-389. EBSCOhost, esearch.ut.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=117019444&site=ehost-live.

Pitts, Jordan W. “References.” Home, lheureespagnole.weebly.com/references.html. Accessed 26 Sept. 2017.