L'heure espagnole

The title, L'Heure Espagnole, is difficult to translate. It can mean The Spanish Hour or Spanish Time. Ravel was a jazz fan so I hope he would have approved of my title. Ravel's sound-world is well-suited to ballet and to orchestral pieces but is more problematical when it comes to opera. In this, one of Ravel's two, brief forays into the form, the vocal line seems to sit uneasily on the impressionistic orchestral accompaniment.

Ravel is not well-served by his libretto. In 1911 Paris it may have seemed the height of daring and chic but today it appears to be just a sordid, sexist farce that seems as dated as a Benny Hill sketch. The plot concerns a randy wife, Concepcion, who has just one hour a week to liaise with her lovers on the afternoon that her clockmaker husband has to wind all the town clocks. Failing to get satisfaction with two potential suitors she finally settles for a muscular deliveryman who happens to be in the vicinity.The story may be after Boccaccio but that does not make it any more attractive.

Sophie Koch does her best with the unsympathetic role of the nympho wife, None of her three lovers can make much of their cardboard cutout parts. I did enjoy Jean-Paul Fouchécourt as the cuckolded clockmaker, Torquemada, he has a striking tenor voice. Sorry about that. Torquemada is rather obsessional about his clocks so it distressed me to see all the clocks on the stage showing a different time. Surely he would have set them correctly.

The piece does not even work well on its own terms since it has none of the motivational imperative of a good farce. Men keep on hiding in grandfather clocks but for no apparent reason, just because they are there. Still, all is not lost if you have bought this DVD since it comes in a double bill with an excellent version of Puccini's Gianni Schicchi.