Written in fictional form, it provides interesting information and documents, not only of a historical nature, but shedding new light on the events that surrounded the premiere of ballet ‘The Three-cornered hat’ in London.

As this article will show, the passage of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes through Spain claimed two victims: the dancers Vaslav Nijinsky and Felix Garcia. After twenty years of research, Hernandez Moreno establishes a parallel between them and sheds surprising and unprecedented information on this matter. The author distilled major information bits in this contribution for Pizzicato. Here is, what he says:Sergei Diaghilev was destined to become the most influential and important artistic entrepreneur of the early 20th century. His intention was to showcase the best of Russian art in Paris and between 1906 and 1908 he began organizing a series of shows and exhibitions in the French capital. To this end, in 1908 Sergei Diaghilev formed a ballet company in St. Petersburg, selecting the best dancers from the Imperial Ballets, including Anna Pávlova and Vaslav Nijinsky.

Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes company was characterized above all by the modernity of its productions. In his ballets, with an oriental, romantic or mythological setting, Diaghilev gave prominence to the male character for the first time. And so Nijinsky soon became the absolute star of the company… and Diaghilev’s lover.The premiere of the ballet The Rite of Spring with music by Stravinsky on 29 May 1913 caused great scandal, as did the ‘Faun’ with music by Debussy exactly one year earlier; but this time for somewhat different reasons: the daring choreography prepared by Nijinsky and the ‘primitive’ music. After the scandal, in July 1913, the Ballets Russes left Europe to make their first tour of South America. But Diaghilev decides not to accompany the company for fear of traveling by steamship. Nijinsky will then take advantage of that situation to marry one of the company’s dancers, Rómola de Pulzsky, as soon as he landed in Buenos Aires. When Diaghilev found out, he sent him a telegram abruptly terminating his contract. Once his professional and romantic relationships with Diaghilev ended, Nijinsky tried to settle in London, but was unable to do so because he fell mysteriously ill and canceled all performances. Nijinsky and Rómola travel with their daughter Kyra to Vienna and days later travel to Budapest, to present their newborn daughter to her in-laws. But the world war of 1914 broke out and Nijinsky was considered an enemy and confined first to house arrest and then to a detention camp.

In November 1915, Diaghilev asked King Alfonso XIII through Countess Greffulhe to mediate Nijinsky’s release so that he could perform at the Paris Opera. In gratitude, Diaghilev would bring the Ballets Russes to Spain. Meanwhile, in January 1916 they began their first tour of the United States. And on May 6, 1916, the Ballets Russes left New York and arrived in Cadiz on May 18, starting on the 26th, what would be the first season of the ‘Bailes Rusos’ in Spain; albeit without Nijinsky, who had not yet been released.

King Alfonso XIII encouraged Diaghilev to have the Russian company create an all-Spanish ballet including local dancers. Summer arrived and the king moved his residence to San Sebastian, and the Ballets Russes accompanied him to offer some shows. And King Alfonso XIII, waiting for the long-awaited Spanish ballet, had to settle for the premiere on 21 August 1916 of a small ballet inspired by the famous painting by Velázquez: Las Meninas. The young dancer Leonid Massine made his debut, Diaghilev’s new protégé and lover.

On Ravel’s advice, Diaghilev had chosen Manuel de Falla as composer of the great new Spanish ballet in September 1916. Falla was then working as interim composer together with Joaquín Turina for the Martínez Sierra theatre company. Diaghilev reached an agreement in Madrid with the playwright’s wife, María Lejárraga, and the composer Manuel de Falla, to set the music and create a ballet based on Pedro Antonio de Alarcón’s novel ‘The Three-Cornered Hat’. The ballet, as announced by the press, was titled: ‘The Governor and the miller’s wife’. To do this, for the main characters (miller and miller), some bailaores from a singing café in Seville, El Novedades, were hired, with the help of de Falla: Luciano Rodríguez El Batato and Ángela Morillo. The drawings were commissioned by the Russian painter Larionov and his wife Gontcharova.

The premiere of ‘The Governor and the miller’s wife’ was scheduled at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome in April 1917, together with the ballet ‘The Good Humored Ladies’ with music by Scarlatti orchestrated by Tommasini. But the Spanish bailaores hired in Seville did not show up as expected in November 1916, so the premiere of The Governor and the miller’s wife could not take place, which angered Diaghilev a lot. The Martínez Sierras, impatient with the wait, performed it for the first time in Madrid on 7 April 1917, but as a theatrical pantomime. On the other hand, Picasso and Cocteau had arrived in Rome in February 1917 to collaborate with Diaghilev on an avant-garde ballet project entitled Parade, which would debut in the Italian capital on 12 April and in Paris on 17 May 1917.

Nijinsky arrived in Madrid in April 1917, where he met Diaghilev weeks later. Nijinsky finally danced with the Ballets Russes company in front of his benefactor, King Alfonso XIII. But Nijinsky showed little interest in dancing to Spanish rhythms and even less with Pastora Imperio, a favorite gypsy dancer of the king.

Finally, Diaghilev hired the dancer Félix García in Madrid, with the aim of teaching Spanish dances to the members of the Russian company to be the protagonist in the role of the miller alongside the dancer Lolita Astolfi.

De Falla, Massine, Diaghilev and Garcia embarked on a journey across Spain in search of inspiration. Pantomimic music was of no use to the ballet without danses de caractère (for the miller and the Governor) nor a danse générale for the entire ballet troupe. The king granted Diaghilev, in regular collaboration with the Spanish entrepreneur Arturo Serrano, the possibility of touring in the main theatres of Spain.

Félix García performed with the Ballets Russes for the first time in Lisbon and then in a tour of the company in Spain from 26 March to 23 June 1918. Upon arrival in Barcelona, ​​the company was stopped due to the closure of the borders, despite the fact that Diaghilev secured a contract to perform at the Coliseum Theatre in London. Thanks, once again, to the diplomatic efforts of King Alfonso XIII, in August 1918 Diaghilev obtained visas for the company to travel to England.

Heading to London, Félix García also traveled, excited to dance the main role in The Three-cornerd Hat, just as Diaghilev had promised. The season of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes at the Coliseum Theatre was long: from September 1918 to February 1919. And before it ended, the English theatre impresario Oswald Stoll offered Diaghilev the opportunity to have the company perform in London in a new season at the Alhambra Theatre. For this, he was asked to plan new creations.

The Alhambra Theatre had an interior design and decoration based on Moorish-style stuccowork, preserving the original facade with its impressive minarets overlooking the famous Leicester Square. It was then that Diaghilev finally had the idea of ​​premiering ‘The Governor and the miller’s wife’ within a London Spanish season alongside Gardens of Aranjuez and La Boutique Fantasque in early June 1919.

But new setbacks and delays prevented de Falla’s final score from being completed on time. The composer’s father had died a couple of months before and his mother was ill. So he could not guarantee that he would finish the orchestral material on time nor the date of his arrival in London, even having Diaghilev’s explicit order to bring thirty pairs of castanets for the final dance (the Jota).

Surprisingly the work was completed and orchestrated within a few weeks, after undergoing major modifications, and was renamed El sombrero de tres picos. It was premiered ‘in extremis’ to great acclaim on the last day of the Ballets Russes season at the Alhambra Theatre in London, but without Félix García.

Félix was arrested on 8 May 1919 after hitting “a glass door” of the church of Saint-Martin-in-the-fields. After being treated at Charing Cross Hospital for injuries to both hands, he was detained at Charing Cross Police Office.

In my book Thirty castanets for London, the result of long and in-depth research, the true identity of the dancer Félix García (actually a stage name) is revealed for the first time, and at the same time his role, gestation and success of the ballet The Three-cornered Hat, as well as the circumstances surrounding the preparation of the ballet’s premiere and which led to the tragic outcome.

The last-minute changes made to the score by composers Respighi and Ravel, weeks before its premiere, are illuminating. It is no coincidence that the French composer chose the piece Bolero to pay ‘posthumous’ homage to Félix García, buried alive in an English mental hospital.

So, the passage of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes through Spain caused two victims. Nijinsky, who lived the rest of his life in various psychiatric sanatoriums in Switzerland until his death in London in 1950. And Félix García, who lived for more than twenty years inmated and forgotten in a psychiatric hospital in Epsom (south of London ) until his death in 1941, where his remains rest in an abandoned cemetery.

Why it was so difficult for me to discover the true identity of the dancer Félix García? With that common first and last name, and without knowing the second surname usually used in Spanish names, the task of searching for the identity of the dancer Félix García became an almost impossible mission.

Furthermore, all previous researchers identified him as an Andalusian flamenco bailaor, originating from Seville or Cadiz. His real age had been falsified to avoid military obligations and thus be able to go abroad. Any documents, photographs or documents that identified him had been destroyed. Furthermore, the argument that he had been arrested and committed to a mental asylum because he had been found dancing naked on a church altar did little to encourage the search for the identity of a poor unfortunate.

The key to knowing the true identity and age of the dancer Félix García was when I found one of the two contracts signed with Diaghilev, the report of his arrest in London and the register of baptisms and the register of inhabitants in which he appears with his family in Madrid. And after all it became clear that Félix García was a stage name.

The Spanish rhythm of the Bolero triumphed in European theatres with a style clearly defined by the dancers Marie Taglioni, Fanny Elssler, Carlota Grisi, Fanny Cerrito and Lucile Grahn, who popularized the use of castanets in ballet. In May 1845 the English press echoed the sensational success that the dancer Manuela Perea, alias La Nena, was achieving together with the bolerist Félix García at none other than the King’s Theatre in London « dancing the bolero rhythm of the Cachucha with taste and admirable liveliness ». Diaghilev was very inclined to change the names of his dancers and the artists who collaborated with him. Leonidas Miassin was renamed Leonid Massine. Hilda Munnings was changed in 1913 to Muningsova, but Diaghilev immediately wrote it naturally and noted as Lydia Sokolova. Remembering this success, present in the visual memory of the London public, was sufficient reason for Diaghilev to baptize the young Félix Fernández González with the stage name Félix García, taking advantage of the coincidence of the first name.

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Author Antonio Hernandez Moreno was born in Águilas, Spain. Son of a teacher and grandson of a musician, he dedicated his entire life to education and music. He studied flute at the Murcia Conservatory and Pedagogy at the University of Murcia. In 1984 he founded Ragtime Concert Band, with which he offered numerous concerts: International Street Jazz Festival (Murcia, 1985 and 1987), 1st National Exhibition of Young Jazz Performers (Palma de Mallorca, 1986) and at the Biennial of Music and Theatre (Modena, Italy, 1987). Parallel to his activity as a musician, his teaching and research work should be highlighted. From this period are the books “My first book of music”, “Living, loving and dying for music” (1991, 1992 Real Musical, Madrid), “Music for children” and “I learn music with Vivaldi” (1993, 1994 Siglo XXI Editions, Madrid and Mexico). Between 2001 and 2004 he was coordinator of one of the first European Comenius projects “Let’s gather, let’s dance together » associated from Cyprus, Belgium and Italy. From 2005 to 2008 he was a consultant for the music pedagogy magazine Eufonía (Barcelona). Between 1999 and 2013 he has been carrying out an intense activity organizing Micro-Concerts for children readers. He taught Spanish language and culture at the ALCE in New York from 2007 to 2013. Since then he has strived to conclude what had been his longest and most ambitious investigation: the relationship of Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes with Spain and the role played by the dancer Félix García in the development of “The Three-Cornered Hat”. This research motivated the foundation, last March 2017, of Alma espanola, a Cycle of Concerts of Spanish Music in homage to the dancer Félix García, and to commemorate the centenary of the premiere of the Spanish ballet in London (1919-2019). This series of concerts are also held every year from 2022 in Epsom (United Kingdom), where the remains of the young Spanish dancer rest.