El Sombrero de Tres Picos (The Three-Cornered Hat) is a ballet choreographed by Léonide Massine to music by Manuel de Falla. It was commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev and premiered in 1919. It is not only a ballet with Spanish setting but one that also employs the techniques of Spanish dance, instead of classical ballet.
Sergei Diaghilev of the Ballets Russes had been introduced to de Falla by Igor Stravinsky during a visit to Spain in 1916. In preparation for producing Spanish choreography, Diaghilev and Massine enlisted the services of dancer Félix Fernández García, who accompanied the two men with de Falla on a tour of Spain in July 1917, introducing them to dancers and performances in Zaragoza, Sevilla, Córdoba, and Granada. Massine, Pablo Picasso, and de Falla worked on the choreography, sets/costumes, and music for the ballet over subsequent months; after some delays, the ballet was eventually premiered in London at the Alhambra Theatre in July 1919. Throughout the ballet, Falla uses traditional Andalusian folk music. The two songs sung by the mezzo-soprano are examples of cante jondo singing, which typically accompanies flamenco music and tells a sad story.
Manuel de Falla (1876–1946) was one of Spain's most important musicians of the first half of the 20th century. His image was even found on the Spanish 100 peseta banknote. He was born Manuel María de los Dolores Falla y Matheu in Cádiz. By 1900 he was living in Madrid, where he attended the Real Conservatory of Music. It was during this Madrid period, that de Falla became interested in native Andalusian music, particularly Andalusian flamenco. His first important work was the one act opera La Vida Breve. La Vida Breve won him the first prize in the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando musical competition, with a prize of 2500 pesetas and a promise of a production at the Teatro Royal in Madrid. De Falla moved to Paris in 1907, where he remained for seven years. There he met a number of composers who had an influence on his style, including the impressionists Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy and Paul Dukas, as well as Igor Stravinsky and the choreographer Sergei Diaghilev. In 1908 King Alfonso XIII of Spain awarded him a royal grant that enabled him to remain in Paris. In 1911–12 he traveled to London, Brussels and Milan to investigate possible venues for his opera La Vida Breve, which despite the support of Dukas and Falla's own best efforts, was not finally performed until April 1913 in Nice. A second production was given the following year at the Opéra-Comique, to critical acclaim. Shortly after the outbreak of World War I he returned to Madrid. While at no stage was he a prolific composer, this became known as his mature creative period when he wrote his nocturne for piano and orchestra, Nights in the Gardens of Spain, the ballet El Amor Brujo and the ballet The Magistrate and the Miller's Wife which, after revision, became known as The Three Cornered Hat.. He moved to Argentina in 1939, following Francisco Franco's victory in the Spanish Civil War. In 1940, he was named a Knight of the Order of King Alfonso X of Castile and Franco's government offered him a large pension if he would return to Spain, but he refused. During his time in exile de Falla spent his time teaching, among his notable pupils was composer Rosa García Ascot. His health began to decline and he died of a heart attack in November 1946 in the Argentine province of Córdoba. In 1947 his remains were brought back to Spain and entombed in the cathedral at Cádiz. One of the lasting honours to his memory is the Manuel de Falla Chair of Music in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the University of Madrid.
