An Extension of My Home Country

Donald Macleod explores the life and work of Spanish composer Manuel de Falla. In 1907 Falla moved to Paris, with a promise of a concert tour that in the end never materialised. He managed to gather together enough pupils to be able to afford stay on, and lived there for the next seven years. He said he found in Paris "what became an extension of my home country." It was in France that Falla's opera La Vida Breve first found success, after which it seems that he was intending to settle permanently in Paris. He hoped his parents and his sister would be able to join him: "not in Paris but a healthy quiet village, cheerful and picturesque, within an hour of the Gare Saint-Lazare." However, very soon afterwards he found Paris mobilising for WW1 and, in common with thousands of other foreigners, left the city, and he returned to neutral Spain.