The Three-cornered Hat

Publisher Marketing: One of the best-loved Spanish novels of all time, The Three-Cornered Hat is a hilarious tale of lust, intrigue and corrupt authorities set in eighteenth-century Andalusia. When the hideous and lascivious corregidor Don Eugenio takes a fancy to the formidable - and formidably desirable - Senora Frasquita, the wife of a local miller, the couple set about foiling his plans for a seduction. There ensues a fast-paced comedy of moonlight flits, clothes swapping, mistaken identity, and slapstick accidents as the characters struggle in vain to maintain both dignity and marital harmony. Calm is eventually restored in a scene of unmasking and mutual forgiveness of truly operatic proportions. Pedro Antonio de Alarcon y Ariza (10 March 1833 - 19 July 1891) was a nineteenth-century Spanish novelist, author of the novel El Sombrero de Tres Picos (The Three-Cornered Hat, 1874). The story is an adaptation of a popular tradition and provides a lively picture of village life in Alarcon's native region of Andalusia. It was the basis for Hugo Wolf's opera Der Corregidor (1897) and Manuel de Falla's ballet The Three-Cornered Hat (1919). Alarcon was born in Guadix, near Granada. In 1859, he served in a Spanish military operation in Morocco. He gained his first literary recognition with A Witness' Diary of the African War (1859-1860), a patriotic account of the campaign.