The Spanish Hour by Ravel, Dl. 01 Juny 2015, De (2015/2015), Dirigit per Philipp M. Krenn, Director musical Gelsomino Rocco, Theater am Fleischmarkt, Vienna, Austria

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) and Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) wanted to revive the genre of Italian opera buffa from the spirit of the French language with their works L'heure espagnole and Les mamelles de Tirésias . An undertaking that was initially unsuccessful in both cases, as both pieces failed with large sections of the audience when they were first performed at the Opéra Comique. A judgment that has long been refuted, because both works are among the most humorous and successful compositions that the 20th century has produced in this genre. In Ravel's L'heure espagnole, the fixed weekly appointment that the watchmaker spends away from home suits his wife at just the right time. She ordered the young poet Gonzalve to go on a rendezvous. However, she has not planned on the donkey driver Ramiro, who is waiting for her husband to return because of an urgent repair of his watch. A grotesque game of confusion and hide-and-seek begins, which threatens to spiral out of control with the appearance of a love-hungry banker. A gender swap determines what happens in Poulenc's comical grotesque Les mamelles de Tirésias. A woman, tired of male rule, shed her breasts and mutated into a general. Her husband then decides to take care of having children himself and gives birth to more than 1,000 children.