Heure Espagnole Ravel Glyndebourne Festival

In a Madrid clockmaker's shop, the proprietor Torquemada departs to regulate the city's clocks, leaving his wife Concepción alone. Two suitors—the muleteer Gonzalve and the banker Inigo—arrive separately, each hoping to seduce her while she pretends to test grandfather clocks as potential purchases. Concepción manipulates both men, hiding them inside the towering timepieces as complications mount. When Torquemada returns with an English tourist seeking a clock, the situation spirals into farcical chaos. The work unfolds as a glittering musical comedy of errors, where Ravel's scintillating orchestration mirrors the mechanical precision of the clocks themselves, while the characters' romantic entanglements tick toward inevitable exposure and comic resolution.