«a mí el querer me envenena,
a mí me matan las penas.»
El Amor Brujo is a 1915 ballet and opera, sung in Andalusian, and the masterpiece of Spanish composer Manuel de Falla. It recounts the possession of a gypsy woman called Candela by her dead husband who bewitched her post morterm despite having been unfaithful to her while she was alive. Candela has always been in love with Carmelo but deprived from him before the death of her husband because of their marriage, and still after because of the spell. The good lovers trick the bad ones in a ritual dance which gets the passion and enchantment transferred from the ones to the others.
The work exists in three versions and has considerably evolved over time, to acquire its most definite shape of "ballet pantomímico" in 1924.
Interestingly, and fittingly to the main theme, the libretto—attributed to Gregorio Martínez Sierra—was in fact written by hiw wife María de la O Lejárraga García, who was using his nom de plume.
It is a work which conveys the passion, the heat of love, the grip it has and burns it makes on the soul and bodies alike. It is fittingly set in the south of Spain, involving a "gitana". It also correctly puts at the center of the plot the irrational, the damning, the black-magical turns all this business usually takes. It was a nice performance from Falla to be able to capture such feelings and set them to music.
The work is available online through the performances by the Orquesta sinfónica del CSM de Murcia (best I know), and many others, including the # Symfonieorkest Vlaanderen, the Postsmouth orchestra, the WDR Symphony Orchestra, etc.