Christmas concert of the Dávalos-Fletcher Foundation, at the Castellón Auditorium, on December 20, 2018.
BellesArts Symphony Orchestra
Director: Andrés Valero-Castells
The Ritual Dance of Fire.
The Ritual Dance of Fire is a dance belonging to the ballet El Amor Brujo, by the Spanish composer Manuel de Falla (1876 - 1946). Falla is, together with the Catalans Isaac Albéniz and Enrique Granados, the third of the composers that make up the great trilogy of Spanish nationalist music.
After spending his youth years in Cádiz, his hometown, he moved to Madrid in 1897, a city where he composed his first important works and where he met musicians of the stature of Felipe Pedrell or Joaquín Turina, composer which encourages him to move to Paris and where he will come into contact with people like Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, Isaac Albéniz or Paul Dukas.
He remained there until 1914, the year in which he returned to Spain, first to reside in Madrid and later in Granada, finally leaving as an exile due to the Spanish Civil War to Argentina, where he died in 1946.
The play El Amor Brujo, which includes this Ritual Dance of Fire, premiered in its final version during its Granada period, and the plot is about a story of spells and witchcraft in which the gypsy Candela sees as the jealous specter of a former dead lover, to whom she had been engaged, intervenes in her love affairs with Carmelo, her true love.
The curse will only be broken with the help of Lucia, whose beauty falls in love with the specter, while the gypsies dance the Dance of Fire. In this way, Candela can finally kiss Carmelo, leaving the curse behind
