About the work
Die spanische Stunde (L'heure espagnole) is a one-act comic opera by Maurice Ravel, based on Franc-Nohain's 1904 play of the same name. Ravel began composing it in 1907, and it premiered on 19 May 1911 at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, on a double bill with Jules Massenet's Thérèse.
Plot
Clockmaker Torquemada has to spend one hour each week tending the town clocks of Toledo, time his wife Concepción uses to meet two admirers. When the muleteer Ramiro arrives as a customer, she hides each lover in turn inside a large grandfather clock that Ramiro must carry up and down the stairs; in the end it is his strength and reliability that win her over, while the discovered admirers save face by buying the clocks they were found in.
Cultural significance
Ravel's taste for Spanish colour runs through the score up to the closing habanera of the quintet, and part of the early critical response reacted with outrage at what it considered a risqué subject. Following a successful revival at the Paris Opéra in 1921, the work entered the international repertoire, reaching houses including Covent Garden, Chicago and New York.