Manuel de Falla's El amor brujo

Carol A. Hess

El amor brujo (trans. "Love, the Magician") is a theater work by the Spanish classical composer Manuel de Falla. It showcases flamenco, the music of the Gitanos who traditionally form Spain's underclass. When it premiered in Spain in 1915, it proved controversial: some Spanish critics applauded Falla for celebrating the music of a marginalized culture while others attacked his mixing of classical and popular idioms.

Since then, El amor brujo has intrigued arrangers and artists. It has been repeatedly reshaped, rearranged, and repackaged, either by Falla himself or by artists ranging from the concert pianist Artur Rubinstein to the super-showman Liberace or to various jazz and pop arrangers. El amor brujo has also figured in soundtracks, whether frothy movie musicals from the 1940s, somber accounts of recent Spanish history, or films on anti-Black racism, including one by Spike Lee. In Manuel de Falla's El amor brujo, author Carol A. Hess explores the ways in which music, class, and race are intertwined in this composition's unusually rich history.