Los títeres de Lorca, Lanz y Falla

THE PUPPETS OF LORCA, LANZ AND FALLA

This exhibition celebrates the centenary of two notable theatrical events and the collaboration of the three people, Lorca, Lanz and Falla, who worked together in creating them.  At the same time, it explores the context in which the performances occurred and traces the sources that inspired these avant-garde puppet-shows.

In 1917 the artist Hermenegildo Lanz arrived in Granada and took up residence there.  The composer Manuel de Falla visited the city several times from 1915 onward, and in 1921 made the Ave María small house and garden his permanent home.  Both Lanz and Falla soon met Federico García Lorca and a close friendship began to develop among the three of them.

After the flop in 1920 of his first play, The Butterfly’s Evil Spell, Lorca turned to popular inspiration and wrote a work for puppets, a project that he shared with the musicologist Adolfo Salazar and with Falla.  Both friends were enthusiastic about it and from this emerged the idea of creating a theatre troupe to be called “The Billy-Club Puppets of Granada”.

The first fruit of this initiative was the Puppet Show for Epiphany, as it has come to be known.  Comprised of three different works, it was performed in the García Lorca family home on 6 January 1923.  A truly collaborative effort, Lorca was in charge of the texts, Lanz the puppets and the sets, and Falla the music.

Meanwhile, Falla had received from the Princess of Polignac a commission for a new musical composition, and precisely in January 1923 he was finishing up work on Master Peter’s Puppet Show, a kind of modern chamber opera.  Taking inspiration from the success of their recent joint venture, Falla decided that for its premiere, which took place in the princess’s palace in Paris on 25 June 1923, that they would use two types of puppets, large ones for the characters who formed the audience and flat figures for the characters inside the puppeteer’s stage.  Again Lanz participated crucially in the creation of puppets and sets.

Andrew A. Anderson