Conference Agenda

June 25, 2023 marks the centenary of the first performance of Manuel de Falla’s El retablo de maese Pedro in the Paris music salon of the Princesse Edmond de Polignac, who commissioned the work and to whom it is dedicated. Based on episodes from Cervantes’s Don Quixote, El retablo is scored for three voices, chamber orchestra and harpsichord and is “acted” by both life-sized marionettes and hand puppets. It enjoyed an immediate success: within a few years of its premiere, it was performed all over Europe, both in its original form and in redesigned productions.

Of the work, the composer wrote to the Princesse, “It represents, perhaps, among my compositions, the one to which I have given my greatest sense of fantasy” [celui où j’ai mis plus d’illusion]. The complex production details of this elaborate play-within-a-play include having the dramatic action enacted entirely by marionettes and hand puppets and situating the work’s three singers offstage among the members of the chamber orchestra. These innovative creative choices have been discussed elsewhere (see, for example, Juan Miermont-Beaure, 2003). Likewise, the composer’s decision to adopt the austere and refined style of Castilian music in order to evoke the time and place of Cervantes’ masterwork, has been amply discussed in the scholarly literature (see, for example, Michael Christoforides, 2002; Carol A. Hess, 2001 and 2005).

My aim to shed light on a little-examined aspect of El retablo: the compositional decisions that Falla made in his scoring to accommodate both the movements of the life-sized marionettes and the hand puppets. I will discuss the ways the percussion and harpsichord evoke mechanization in the music and the inclusion of many unmetered, recitativo-like passages that enable flexibility in the timing of the marionettes’ movements. The “disembodied” voices of the vocal soloists, hidden among the instrumentalists, and the extravagantly virtuosic nature of the instrumental solos creates a fascinating tension with the angular movements of the non-human “actors”. My analyses of the musical settings for the puppets and marionettes will include writings by and interviews with puppeteer Basil Twist and videos of his productions of El retablo.

When the Parisian Petit-Théâtre de la Marionnette opened in 1888, the Revue d’art dramatique declared it a symbolist theatre. Founded by Henri Signoret and Maurice Bouchor, audiences at the Petit-Théâtre included artists such as Stéphane Mallarmé and Claude Debussy, who gathered to experience works for puppets with music. For these reasons, the theatre’s productions have been explored as expressions of symbolism in music. Since the repertoire included sacred mystery plays, some scholars contend that Bouchor’s works supported the so-called Catholic-Republican ralliement. Although symbolism and religion serve as important lenses through which to consider the theatre’s activities, I argue that one must interpret its productions in the broader context of French puppetry.

Our literature has yet to address the ways in which the gradual abolition of censorship after 1871 allowed Bouchor’s works to become radically different from what came before, partly because the French archives dealing with puppetry under censorship remain substantially under explored. But recent literature on nineteenth-century French puppetry paints the broader strokes: shows were largely character-driven, aurally transmitted, and performed in temporary installations, often by families. Moreover, productions were heavily invested in action, since original music was forbidden, as was speech, other than gibberish.

In contrast, Bouchor’s musical puppet plays were published literary works, narrative-driven, and given in a permanent theatre, by a group of artists and musicians. Furthermore, the slow action of Bouchor’s marionnette à clavier redirected attention to his Molièresque alexandrines, delivered by natural voices, which also sang original music. I conclude that Bouchor’s productions more closely resembled those given in the eighteenth century. In some ways, the Petit-Théâtre should be viewed as part of the same movement to restore the past advocated by monarchists in dance (Pasler 2015) and musicians such as Charles Bordes (Ellis 2005). No stranger to this movement, Bouchor’s works recalled the artistry of ancien régime puppetry, even as they reflected the aesthetics and political issues of the belle époque.