[1] In 1916-1917, Manuel de Falla composed the music for a two-scene pantomime El corregidor y la molinera (The Magistrate and the Miller's Wife).
The plot was from Pedro Antonio de Alarcón's 1874 novel of the same title, adapted for the stage by María Martínez Sierra.
Sergei Diaghilev of the Ballets Russes had been introduced to de Falla by Igor Stravinsky during the company's first visit to Spain in 1916.
Diaghilev requested permission to use de Falla's already-completed Noches en los jardines de España (Nights in the Gardens of Spain) and the work-in-progress El corregidor y la molinera for future choreographies, but only managed to secure permission for the latter.
In preparation for staging Spanish choreography, Diaghilev and Leonid Massine enlisted the services of teenage dancer Félix Fernández García, who accompanied the two men with de Falla on a tour of Spain in July 1917, introducing them to dancers and performances in Zaragoza, Toledo, Salamanca, Burgos, Sevilla, Córdoba, and Granada.
After a dramatic falling-out shortly before opening night, Garcia was arrested, certified insane and committed to an asylum in Epsom.
Declared dead to his family and the outside world, Garcia was in fact confined secretly for another 22 years, until he died in 1941.
[2] Francisco Giménez-Rodríguez has investigated the performance history in Hungary of The Three-Cornered Hat (A háromszögletű kalap in Hungarian).
[4] The story of a magistrate infatuated with a miller's faithful wife, whom he attempts to seduce, derives from the novella of the same name by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón.
The music is in eight main sections, split across an introduction and two parts, or acts, with some bridging scenes: After a short fanfare, the curtain rises revealing a mill in Andalusia.
The two songs sung by the mezzo-soprano are examples of cante jondo singing, which typically accompanies flamenco music and tells a sad story.
[6] For convenience, this discography focuses on recordings of the complete ballet of El sombrero de tres picos.