L'Heure espagnole | L'Enfant et les sortilèges
Maurice Ravel - 29.10 > 08.11 2026
L'Heure espagnole
Franc-Nohain — based on his eponymous play
Torquemada has eyes only for his wife, Concepción. But he is not the only one. In his clock shop, suitors come and go to the rhythm of the tick-tock. From stratagem to misunderstanding, Concepción hopes to take advantage of her husband's absence for a romantic adventure. At the end of a burlesque ballet, all the admirers end up hidden in clocks, transported upstairs by Ramiro, a muleteer…
Scandal! What is this opera subject where men hide in clocks to be later transported to the room of an unfaithful woman? At the premiere of The Spanish Hour in 1911, critics lambasted the work, even going so far as to cry pornography. The young composer was also accused of a cold aesthetic. For the time, the subtle timbres of the orchestra seem singular. Celesta, tubular bells, and muted horns juxtapose with polyrhythms; as in the prelude where three pendulums set to different tempos create a closed world.
Ravel considers his work to be a musical comedy. Apart from the accents of Hispanic melodies from the poet and lover Gonzalve, the other voices aim to be as close as possible to spoken inflections. Little by little, The Spanish Hour will be recognised as a gem of funny and bittersweet melodies, with a chiselled and surprising orchestration.
L'Enfant et les sortilèges
Colette
In a fit of anger, a capricious child lashes out at everything around him: a clock, a cup, the princess from a torn book, a squirrel… Nothing and no one is spared. But then the toys, the furniture, the animals come to life in turn. In a carousel of fairy-tale scenes, the child discovers that each mistreated object has a voice and a heart. A lesson in tenderness unfolds.
« I had not anticipated that an orchestral wave, studded with nightingales and fireflies, would lift my modest work so high. » In 1914, Colette wrote a « little poem », a ballet for her daughter, which she proposed to the director of the Paris Opera. Both mentioned Ravel for the music but Rouché tempered: Ravel writes slowly, very slowly. The work would not be created until eleven years later and, in the meantime, would have become a lyrical fantasy. The verb and the music respond to each other in an intertwining of onomatopoeias, neologisms, and instrumental rarities. Ravel multiplies styles (jazz, waltz, ragtime…) and does not hesitate to use a cheese grater to create a sound bubble typical of childhood, where one constant reigns: the melody, at its simplest, closest to the words.
