Opera de Monte-Carlo: L’Heure espagnole Tickets | Event Dates & Schedule | GoComGo.com

L’Heure espagnole Tickets

Opera de Monte-Carlo, Monaco, Monaco
L’Heure espagnole
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Available Dates: 21 - 27 Mar, 2025 (4 events)
Important Info
Type: Opera
City: Monaco, Monaco
Acts: 1

E-tickets: Print at home or at the box office of the event if so specified. You will find more information in your booking confirmation email.

You can only select the category, and not the exact seats.
If you order 2 or 3 tickets: your seats will be next to each other.
If you order 4 or more tickets: your seats will be next to each other, or, if this is not possible, we will provide a combination of groups of seats (at least in pairs, for example 2+2 or 2+3).

Cast
Performers
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Creators
Composer: Maurice Ravel
Composer: Maurice Ravel
Librettist: Franc-Nohain
Director: Jean-Louis Grinda
Author: Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette
History
Premiere of this production: 28 October 1904, Théâtre de l'Odéon

L'heure espagnole is a French one-act opera from 1911, described as a comédie musicale, with music by Maurice Ravel to a French libretto by Franc-Nohain, based on Franc-Nohain's 1904 play ('comédie-bouffe') of the same name The opera, set in Spain in the 18th century, is about a clockmaker whose unfaithful wife attempts to make love to several different men while he is away, leading to them hiding in, and eventually getting stuck in, her husband's clocks. The title can be translated literally as "The Spanish Hour", but the word "heure" more importantly means "time" – "Spanish Time", with the connotation "How They Keep Time in Spain".

Synopsis

Time: 18th century
Place: The workshop of the clockmaker Torquemada in Toledo, Spain.

The opera takes place in 21 scenes, with an introduction.

Torquemada is at work in his shop when the muleteer Ramiro stops by to have his watch fixed, so that he can fulfill his duties at collecting the town's post. It is Thursday, the day that Torquemada goes out to tend the municipal clocks, so Ramiro must wait. Torquemada's wife, Concepción, enters to complain that her husband hasn't yet moved a clock into her bedroom. After Torquemada has left, she takes advantage of his absence to plan assignations with gentleman friends. However, the presence of Ramiro is initially a hindrance. So she asks him to move a grandfather clock to her bedroom, which he agrees to do.

Meanwhile, she waits for Gonzalve, a poet. He arrives, and is inspired to poetry, but not to lovemaking, where Concepción would prefer the latter. When Ramiro is about to return, she sends him back saying that she chose the wrong clock. She then has the idea of having Gonzalve hide in one clock so that Ramiro can carry him upstairs. After Gonzalve is concealed, Don Iñigo, a banker and another of Concepción's gentleman friends, arrives. When Ramiro returns, she persuades him to carry up the clock with Gonzalve concealed in it, and she accompanies him.

On his own, Don Iñigo conceals himself in another clock. Ramiro enters, asked to watch the shop, and musing on how little he understands of women. Concepción then summons him back upstairs, saying that the clock's hands are running backwards. She and Don Iñigo try to communicate, but Ramiro arrives back with the other clock. Don Iñigo has hidden himself again, and Ramiro now carries up the clock with Don Iñigo upstairs.

With Gonzalve now downstairs, Concepción tries to turn him away from poetry towards her, but Gonzalve is too absorbed to follow her lead. Ramiro returns, and Gonzalve must conceal himself again. He offers to take the second clock up again. Impressed by how easily Ramiro carries the clocks (and their load) upstairs, Concepción begins to be physically attracted to him.

With Gonzalve and Don Iñigo now each stuck in clocks, Torquemada returns from his municipal duties. Both Gonzalve and Don Inigo eventually escape their respective clock enclosures, the latter with more difficulty. To save face, they each have to purchase a clock. Concepción is now left without a clock, but she muses that she can wait for the muleteer to appear regularly with his watch repaired. The opera ends with a quintet finale, as the singers step out of character to intone the moral of the tale, paraphrasing Boccaccio:

"Entre tous les amants, seul amant efficace,
Il arrive un moment, dans les déduits d'amour,
Où le muletier a son tour!"
"Among all lovers, only the efficient succeed,
The moment arrives, in the pursuit of love,
When the muleteer has his turn!"

Venue Info

Opera de Monte-Carlo - Monaco
Location   Place du Casino

The Opéra de Monte-Carlo is an opera house, which is part of the Monte Carlo Casino located in the Principality of Monaco. With the lack of cultural diversions available in Monaco in the 1870s, Prince Charles III, along with the Société des Bains de mer, decided to include a concert hall as part of the casino. The main public entrance to the hall was from the casino, while Charles III's private entrance was on the western side. It opened in 1879 and became known as the Salle Garnier, after the architect Charles Garnier, who designed it During the renovation of the Salle Garnier in 2004–05, the company presented operas at the Salle des Princes in the local Grimaldi Forum, a modern conference and performance facility where Les Ballets de Monte Carlo and the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra regularly perform.

Salle Garnier

The architect Charles Garnier also designed the Paris opera house now known as the Palais Garnier. The Salle Garnier is much smaller, seating 524, compared to about 2,000 for the Palais Garnier, and unlike the Paris theatre, which was started in 1861 and only completed in 1875, the Salle Garnier was constructed in only eight and a half months. Nevertheless, its ornate style was heavily influenced by that of the Palais Garnier, and many of the same artists worked on both theatres. Although the Monte Carlo theatre was not originally intended for opera, it was soon used frequently for that purpose and was remodeled in 1898–99 by Henri Schmit, primarily in the stage area, to make it more suitable for opera.

The hall was inaugurated on 25 January 1879 with a performance by Sarah Bernhardt dressed as a nymph. The first opera performed there was Robert Planquette's Le Chevalier Gaston on 8 February 1879, followed by three additional operas in the first season.

With the influence of the first director, Jules Cohen (who was instrumental in bringing Adelina Patti) and the fortunate combination of Raoul Gunsbourg, the new director from 1892, and Princess Alice, the opera-loving American wife of Charles III's successor, Albert I, the company was thrust onto the world's opera community stage. Gunsbourg remained for sixty years, overseeing such premiere productions as Hector Berlioz's La damnation de Faust in 1893, and the first appearances in January 1894 of the heroic Italian tenor Francesco Tamagno in Verdi's Otello, whose title role he had created for the opera's premiere in Italy. Conductor Arturo Vigna served as music director of the Monte Carlo Opera from 1895-1903.

By the early years of the twentieth century, the Salle Garnier was to see such great performers as Nellie Melba and Enrico Caruso in La bohème and Rigoletto (in 1902), and Feodor Chaliapin in the premiere of Jules Massenet's Don Quichotte (1910). This production formed part of a long association between the company and Massenet and his operas, two of which were presented there posthumously.

Other famous twentieth-century singers to appear at Monte Carlo included Titta Ruffo, Geraldine Farrar, Mary Garden, Tito Schipa, Beniamino Gigli, Claudia Muzio, Georges Thill, Lily Pons, and Mary McCormic.

Apart from Massenet, composers whose works had their first performances at Monte Carlo included: Saint-Saëns (Hélène, 1904); Mascagni (Amica, 1905); and Puccini (La rondine, 1917). Indeed, since its inauguration, the theatre has hosted 45 world premiere productions of operas. René Blum was retained to found the Ballet de l'Opéra. The "Golden Age" of the Salle Garnier has passed, since small companies with small houses are not able to mount highly expensive productions. Nonetheless, the present day company still presents a season containing five or six operas.

Gala Events in Salle Garnier

Twice in its 130-year history the Opéra was transformed into a spectacular venue to host gala-dinners. The first occasion was in 1966 for the celebration of centenary of Monte-Carlo hosted by Grace Kelly and Rainier III; the second was for the royal wedding of Prince Albert II and Princess Charlene. The Opéra was transformed for the third time on 27 July 2013 to host the Love Ball, a fundraising gala event organised by the Naked Heart Foundation.

Important Info
Type: Opera
City: Monaco, Monaco
Acts: 1

E-tickets: Print at home or at the box office of the event if so specified. You will find more information in your booking confirmation email.

You can only select the category, and not the exact seats.
If you order 2 or 3 tickets: your seats will be next to each other.
If you order 4 or more tickets: your seats will be next to each other, or, if this is not possible, we will provide a combination of groups of seats (at least in pairs, for example 2+2 or 2+3).

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