This _Gitaneria_ (Gypsy Life) in one act and two scenes, a choreographic fantasy with voice and small orchestra, book by Gregorio Martinez Sierra (known in this country by the plays _A Romantic Young Lady_, _Cradle Song_, _The Kingdom of God_), was produced at the Teatro de Lara, Madrid, April 15, 1915, with the Señora Pastora Imperio assisting. A concert version was performed at Madrid in 1916, E. Fernandez Arbos conductor, at a concert of the Sociedad Nacional de Música. According to G. Jean-Aubry, "De Falla drew from the music certain symphonic excerpts, in which he suppressed the spoken or sung parts and enlarged the instrumentation.... But this did not alter the essential character of the work, which is to be found in its particular color, or the semi-Arabian style of its idioms."
This suite was performed for the first time in London on November 23, 1921.
Sierra based the libretto of de Falla's ballet pantomime on an Andalusian gypsy story. _Brujo_ means a wizard, a male witch. Mr. Trent, in his _Manuel de Falla and Spanish Music_, writes: "_L'Amour sorcier_ has misled both audiences and English translators. _Love the Wizard_ gives an entirely wrong impression; _Wedded by Witchcraft_, proposed as an alternative, is a description, more or less, of what happens; and even that would be better as _Wedded in Spite of Witchcraft_."
There was a small orchestra when the work was first produced. As finally revised, the score calls for piccolo, two flutes, oboe, two clarinets, bassoon, two horns, two trumpets, kettledrums, bells (A, D, C), piano, and strings. A mezzo-soprano sings "behind"; but in concerts the voice is replaced by a horn, or in one place an English horn.
When Mr. Arbos conducted this work in St. Louis, the Programme Book, edited by Harry R. Burke, contained this synopsis of the story published as a preface to the piano score:
"Candelas, a young, very beautiful and passionate woman has loved a wicked, jealous and dissolute, but fascinating and cajoling Gypsy. Although having led a very unhappy life with him, she has loved him intensely and mourned his loss, unable ever to forget him. Her memory of him is something like a hypnotic dream, a morbid, gruesome, and maddening spell. She is terrified by the thought that the dead may not be entirely gone, that he may return, that he continues to love her in that fierce, shadowy, faithless, and caressing way. She lets herself become a prey to the past as if under the influence of a specter; yet she is young, strong, vivacious. Spring returns, and with it love, in the shape of Carmelo.