Cantata in a prologue and three parts based on the poem by Jacint Verdaguer, adapted by Manuel de Falla.

Music by Manuel de Falla, completed by Ernesto Halffter

ATLANTIDA

A vast oratory poem for soloists, chorus and orchestra, based on Catalan texts by Jacint Verdaguer, some religious and in Latin and others in Spanish. In what was to be his last and unfinished work, the composer searches for a great form, with choirs predominating, comparable to to those oratories prior to the great baroque. The project, with the texts prepared by Falla himself, becomes ever wider. However, his delicate health and the difficult events in Spanish life, ending with the Civil War of 1936-39 almost paralise the development of "Atlantida".

"Atlantida" connects the myth of the lost continent to the adventure of the discovery of America under the sign of Catholicism. Following suggestions from the painter José María Ser, Falla didnīt imagine a piece for the great opera stages but a piece in which the narrative episodes would be illustrated by great pictures painted by Ser for each of the motifs.When Falla dies, the score is unfinished. The prologue is composed in its entirety, the orchestration also. The first part is fully planned, but partially finished and lacking orchestration. The second remained a little more confusing. Some fragments defined and a large quantity of annotations, especially chorales. The final part, dedicated to the discovery of the New World and of religious content, remained generally finished (except for the final doubt), partially composed, unorchestrated but with a lot of instrumental annotations. Fallaīs family and the Ricordi publishing company booked Ernesto Halffter, Fallaīs most noted disciple, to finish the piece. After many years of work, "Atlantida opened in its concert version in Barcelona in 1961, and in 1962 in La Scala of Milan in its stage version. After many openings Halffter began a new version using those fragments almost finished or defined by Falla. This version opened in Lucern Festival in 1976.

On one hand, Falla spokeof "Atlantida" as a scenic cantata. But in his correspondence and journal interviews he referred to its oratory. We also know about his refusal to any stage design, his dislike of opera theatres as stages, and his preference for religious environments, such as the Monastery of Poblet.

"Atlantida" appears as great "mystery" or "sacra representazione", in which Falla extracts the essence of Spanish and especially Catalan music, from the Middle Ages to the recovery of traditional culture during the last century which characterises the "renaissance" of Catalonia.

Falla creates, in the XX century and in a miraculous way, a "romance" which could have been written by some composer of five centuries earlier. He works in emotional and asthetic religious polyphony with instrumental and vocal combination. He practices, within the concept, different styles that come from the Iberian impressionism of the prologue, with a beautiful and original succession of chords, till the monodies, almost Monteverdian, of the "Corifeo".

If the concerto is summarised, "Atlantida is a great addition to music and culture. It can not be understood in its entirety if you donīt know Spanish history. If we think that the "Prologue" was written before the "Symphony of Psalms" by Stravinsky, we can value the meaning that "Atlantida" could have had if it had been finished and heard in its time.

Enrique Franco

AIMS

To apply the multi-disciplinary experience accumulated by La Fura through the years. This, however, their first contact with lyrical theatre, which can provide an important quantity of nerve to the final result.

To provide, through the modelling, a meeting between Falla and the present. In other words, to connect the language of La Fura Dels Baus to the contemplation of the Atlantida imagined by Falla.

To represent Atlantida in a way where the audience feels involved in a magically rhythmic, modelled and emotional world for an hour and a half. Updating and reinforcing the nature of scenic cantata of the piece through "plastic pictures" which, as a great altarpiece, change slowly, creating a contemplative attitude in the audience. These "pictures" give an added value to the music.

The legend of Atlantida

The sinking of a generation (1927-1946)

Atlantida, according to Greek mythology, a continent settled by the Atlants, sunk due to an earthquake. Platon speaks of it in his Dialogues, Timon and Critias, as a model of perfect state, comparable to Utopia, and describes its illustrated and advanced civilisation and the happiness of its people.

A whole continent sank with Atlantida: Europe is also sinking. The new century had begun with great social conflicts; It wasnīt enough with the First World War, the Second would came, and Spain would begin the terrible Civil War. At the same time Atlantida was slowly being composed, the continent was convulsed. The ideals of any citizen disappeared after crashing

head-on with bitter reality. Ideals and utopias went down, until the fall involved the whole generation.

The authors

Shipwrecking in a sea of nonsense Verdaguer, Falla And Sert are the authors that give birth to this unfinished project. The three, for different reasons, face a work of inmense proportions at a moment in which their inspiration and artistic obsession are in a cruel fight against the forces of destiny.

For Verdaguer, for example, Atlantida is a work of youth. He began to write an epic poem about the discovery of America when he was twenty, linking it later to Greek mythology and the legend of Atlas, Hercules, Gerion, the burning of the Pyrenees, the garden of Hesperides, the sinking of Atlantida, that he linked to the romantic birth of a new Spain, united and active. He finished the poem twelve years later, after a large number of versions and corrections. In a moment of his life Verdaguer, as many other mystics in other times, crashes against the church powers, which sent him into exile for a long time, banning him to act as a priest.

On the contrary, for Falla, Atlantida is his last composition and in the beginning he puts all his effort into it. He begins an inmense work with much attention to detail, he studies Catalan in order to be able to musically respect the libretto and makes a lot of trials and studies of the language of the great Spanish polyphonists to write the choral parts. The years pass until the Civil

War and his delicate health make it impossible for him to finish it. During the following years, Atlantida becomes a number of unlucky attempts. In the end it was only Fallaīs dead body which returned from American exile to his native Cadiz to be buried, silently sailing over his sunken Atlantida.

Sert, from the beginning, had encouraged Falla to put Verdaguerīs verses to music and they had agreed that it would be Sert himself who designed and painted the pictures for the stage of this future scenic cantata, although he never began them. Always very busy, travelling from here to there, he had spent 25 years twice painting the Cathedral of Vic as well as doing other works

in other countries. Unfortunately, at the beginning of the civil war someone burned the Cathedral, destroying what he considered his masterpiece. Despite the terrible shock that it gave him, he painted it again for the third time after the war had finished. A few days after having finished his work he died and was buried in the same cathedral, under his paintings.

It seems as if destiny and the forces of nature laughed at these great artists, who at the end of their lives fought against their destiny as did the characters of Atlantida, which focus around two great topics, punishment and destruction, forgiveness and creation. However in the end they finally become instruments of the divinity.

Carlos Padrissa

SCENIC SPACE_IMAGE

Constant mutation until disappearance

José María Sert , who Falla had always had in mind to create the stage design, considered the use of projections in order to create a magical atmosphere in the cantata:

We could visit Poblet together, reach an agreement with Millet and draw the glasses for the projections. Letter by Sert to Falla, 4 June 1931

For Falla, as for Sert, the model image of Atlantida existed only in his imagination. In this production the aim is to reinforce this idea with fantasy stage designs, projections in constant transformation until they disappear, shadows and images over a great Sert style mural. As Falla at times imagined: fixed paintings subdivided by changing transparencies.

Instead of curtains there is only a 13 x 9 m. screen. Onto which simple animated images are projected. This screen has a scaffolding as support.

The second scenic element is a huge volumetric screen . This must be mobile, composed of six, very light, three-dimensional modules (2x1x1m). Itīs like a great sculpture which acts as a mobile screen onto which several images are projected, which, depending on the changing shape of sculpture, represent Atlas, The Ship, Hercules, a Cave, The World, an Angel, The towers of Hercules, a throne,...

The audience should have the feeling that they are submerged in the sea. As in the composition itself, itīs about playing with impossible perspectives: now the ceiling is the sea, then it seems as if the audience were watching from a bridge over the waters, now vertical, ...

As Manuel de Falla was so impressed by cathedrals and dreamt of their great stained-glass windows for the scenery of Atlantida, the facade of the cathedral, its three doors, stained-glass windows, statues, columns, belltower etc. were used and highlighted at the end of the opening in Granada.