The six characters in Los Bufones are less than footnotes in Spanish history.  References to them exist, buried in the Palace Archives of Madrid (an extraordinarily detailed inventory of fabrics and clothes given as favors to ‘Don Juan’, for example; a document making Nicolasito an official Chamber Attendant when he was about 30; and so forth), but we are only familiar with them through the profoundly human portraits of them painted by Diego Velázquez, the official court painter from 1623 until his death in 1660.  

Dwarfs, jesters, and the ‘amusingly deranged’ had been accessories of monarchies for centuries, performing the political role of implying, by their contrasting presence, the supposed superiority and perfection of their royal patrons.  Fondly regarded by the royal family while earning the jealousy and antagonism of much of the court, these toys of royalty had never been portrayed with such compassion and full regard for their humanity before Velázquez.

Although in reality the characters in Los Bufones could not have performed together at the Alcázar (two or three died before 1650, two arrived only after that date), I exercised the artistic license of joining them together in a fictional time-space at the court of Felipe IV, for I imagine that they shared an identical disquiet at their precarious existence there. Protected by royal favor, sumptuously housed and attired, contracted to receive specific gifts at specific times, they nevertheless held no legal position and could be traded, sold, given away, or banished — like pets or slaves.  An examination of documents from the time gave me an inkling of their circumstances: their duties and obligations, who their friends and enemies were likely to be, what they might have been permitted to say and what forbidden, and how tactics of survival most likely shaped their thoughts and actions. 

Not being a native Spanish speaker, I wrote my libretto in English, with an imperfect sense of what the final Spanish text would be.  I then set to music the graceful version in Spanish provided by María Cristina López. The sonic colors and rhythms of Spanish have attracted me as a composer as much as these portraits by Velázquez.  I wondered at the courage and ingenuity it took for these six bufones to live as constant outsiders in the highly structured, insular, exclusionary world of the Spanish court.  I wrote Los Bufones in homage to them, and to Velázquez.            —  Ron Strauss, January, 2017