Miller's Virtuous Wife In Lively Ballet OF Spain

Radio Record, Volume XII, Issue 35, 10 February 1939, Page 23

Miller's Virtuous Wife In Lively Ballet OF Spain

Gay Melodies To Delight The Gloomy

LUSICAL wizard of Spain is de Falla. In his delightful ballets he conjures up scenes of such gorgeous colour, such dazzling romance that the listener is bewitched and imtoxicated by their alluring charm. The gay melodies and fascinating rhythms of his music "past a spell which even the Xgtoomiest mortal must find impossible to resist. How wonderfully de. Falla knows every corner of Spanish life! In "The Three Cornered Hat" ballet, the action is founded on a story wherein & pompous. magistrate seeks to seduce a miller’s virtuous wife, only to meet defeat and ridieule at the hands of the lady and her watchful spouse. The ballet takes its name from the official hat of this magistrate or Corregidor. The scene is the approach to a mill and, in the opening dances, the miller and his wife are busy about their garden and its grape vines. They are clearly a devoted couple. A voice is heard near the beginning singing an Andalusian song; it is a summer afternoon. The pompous and ungainly Corregidor, with his suite, passes by, and is so smitten by the charms ef the miller’s wife

that he soon returns to pay his addresses to her. She dances a Fandango for him, fooling him so successfully as to leave him ridiculously discomfited. In the evening of the same daySt. John’s Festival-the miller’s friends drink and make merry with him and his wife, and then the miller dances for them-a vigorous and rhythmic measure. Hardly has he ended when the Corregidor’s minions appear and arrest him, refusing any reason for their warrant. When the miller’s wife has put out the lights and shut the mill, the Corregidor appears furtively, fired by wicked hopes, but again is discomfited, falling in the darkness, into the mill-stream. The husband escapes his captors and returns, and, after various complications, the ballet ends in the happy reunion of the faithful pair, with their neighbours hurrying in to toss the wicked Corregidor in a blanket. "The Three Cornered Hat Suite’ by Manuel de Fala, will be played by the New Light Symphony Orchestra, under Dr. Malcolm Sargent, from iYA on Saturday, January 14.