The year 2023 marks the 100th anniversary of the premiere of El retablo de maese Pedro, a chamber opera written for puppets, with music by Manuel de Falla and libretto taken from a chapter of Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote. Since then, the work has become an icon of Spanish music and culture that forces spectators to rethink basic categories in the art world, such as the representation of national identity, the dichotomy of tradition versus modernity, the coexistence of highbrow and lowbrow, or the thin line that separates fantasy from reality.

The exhibition is divided into seven sections, a number that held great symbolic meaning for the composer. It reveals Falla’s boyhood fascination with puppets, the indelible impression that Cervantes and Don Quixote made on the musician’s career, the lengthy process of creating the work, its premiere in the aristocratic salon of the Princesse de Polignac, and the subsequent renown of a work which has inspired many different musicians and visual artists across the globe. After all, El retablo de maese Pedro may be rooted in tradition, but it also picks up on even the faintest echoes of the present.