Hispanic Traditions in a Cross-Cultural Perspective: Raoul Laparra's La habanera (1908) and French Critics

Abstract

The French composer Raoul Laparra held an advanced knowledge of Spanish culture and music that was rare among French musicians. In his first opera, La habanera (Opéra-Comique, 1908), he tried to represent a Spain that was ‘different from Carmen’, focused on the ‘colder’ central region of Castile rather than southern, gypsy stereotypes. However, owing to several inconsistencies in his ideological agenda, and the weight of conventional representations of Spanish music and culture, Laparra rendered a contradictory image of Spain, which drew partly on the very southern and gypsy stereotypes he had intended to oust. Furthermore, the French critics’ lack of familiarity with Spanish traditions caused his project to be misunderstood. Those critics read La habanera in the context of French cultural struggles, mostly related to the definition of a national identity and the influence of Italian and German music.