2023-06-12 04:04:59
Every year, the same sequence. The seasons in the big capitals -Madrid and Barcelona fundamentally- leave the forum (or almost) and the summer festivals emerge on stage to take over all the spotlights: Almagro and Mérida are the great locomotives of the Spanish theatrical summer, but the appointments multiply throughout our geography, with a special role for our Golden age. From what you can see, the classics are for summer, like bicycles.
Some use their own history as an excuse: alcalabirthplace of Cervantes; Olmedo, the town where Lope de Vega placed one of his most famous works. Others polish their monumental spaces, in the case of the Greek (Greek Theater of Barcelona, built for the Universal Exhibition of 1929) You were (Castle, from the 13th and 14th centuries), Sagunto (Roman Theatre, from the year 50 AD), caceres (historic helmet). And others are simply celebrated for the sake of it, such as the Palma del Río Theater Fair (Córdoba) or the San Javier Festival (Murcia). Not all of them are there, but these ten festivals are all of them.
Almagro is a contest created around its historic Comedy Corral, “the only fully preserved example of a 17th-century theater of this type,” the festival presumes, “since, today, it continues to maintain the original structure of the Golden Age comedy corrals.” In its forty-sixth edition, the director premieres, Irene Brownwhich says that “it will be the festival of coexistence between the classic and the contemporary, where heritage and tradition do not compete with the present, it will be a space where emotion and reflection meet, where craft meets experimentation and in which artists and audiences meet head-on”.
The Corral de Comedias award will kick off a contest that will take place in fifteen spaces and present forty-four shows; among them, four of the National Classical Theater CompanyAlmagro’s backbone: ‘The Empty Temple’, created by its director, Lluís Homar; ‘Courage, offense and woman’, by Ana Caro Mallén; ‘The discreet lover’, by Lope de Vega; and ‘Life is a dream’, by Calderón de la Barca.
Of the forty-four shows presented at Almagro, eleven will be world premieres and one of them will be a national premiere. From the festival stands out the female presence, both in terms of classical authors and directors. Irene Pardo highlighted three premieres at the presentation: ‘Toda la noche m’alumbres’, a recital of ancient music, lyrical poetry and Castilian mysticism directed and performed by Elena González and Pepe Viyuela (with the accompaniment of Sara Águeda); ‘Monsters. The wonder of the gods’, by Aurora Parrilla, based on texts by Calderón de la Barca, and directed by David Boceta; and ‘Yo deseo’, an “electronic recital of feminine inconfessions”, in which Eduardo Mayo conducts the actress Eva Rufo and the musician Enrico Bárbaro.
On July 1 -two days after Almagro raised his curtain- a new edition of the Merida International Classical Theater Festival, structured mainly around the magnificent Roman Theatre, recovered for the stage in 1933 by the legendary Catalan actress Margarita Xirgu. Celebrate the contest, directed since 2012 by the producer Jesus Cimarroits 69th edition, which will begin with a concert by the Zaragoza Auditorium Chamber Orchestra – ‘Grupo Enigma’, which will perform ‘Oresteïa (Orestíada)’, by Iannis Xenakis.
With a diametrically opposed philosophy (its spaces and surroundings are also), Mérida presents nine more shows, many of which are world premieres and the festival’s own production. Sílvia Abril, Pepa Rus, José Troncoso, Ramoncín, Daniel Diges, Cayetana Guillén Cuervo, Chevi Muraday, Pepe Viyuela, Mariano Peña, Paco Mir, Pepón Nieto, Antonio Pagudo, Andrés Lima, Belén Rueda, Luisa Martín, Magüi Mira and Emma Ozores These are some of the proper names on which Mérida especially supports her claim; more than in the titles, although this edition includes ‘The Twins’, ‘Salomé’ or ‘The Comedy of Errors’.
That the classics are for the summer is also known by the two early-rising festivals: the Classic Theater Festival of Cácereswhich celebrates its thirty-fourth edition, and the XXII Ibero-American Festival of the Golden Age of the Community of Madrid. Classics in Alcalá. The two are already underway; the first with a program that includes around twenty shows, including the co-production of two shows with companies from Extremadura and an unpublished Lope de Vega, ‘El marqués de las Navas’. The Complutense festival, for its part, presents more than thirty shows, of which more than twenty stage proposals are from the Community of Madrid and more than half of these bear the ‘Creación Alcalá’ label. Works also come from Colombia, Argentina, the United States and Chile.
The Barcelona scene directs the focus for a month to the Teatre Grec, the backbone of an event that it directs Cesc Casadesús, which seeks a balance between local talent and big international names in theatre, dance, music, cinema and circus. Here the classics are allowed to eat the ground by contemporaries such as Sasha Waltz, Declan Donnellan, Carlota Subirós, Alexander Zeldin, Agrupación Señor Serrano, Ivo van Hove, Dimitris Papaioannou, Rocío Molina or La Veronal.
The posters have not yet been made public. Sagunto in Scene, which between August 3 and 27 will celebrate its fortieth edition; nor of Classic Olmedo, which will take place between July 21 and 30. Yes she has done it Performing Arts Fair of Palma del Río (Córdoba)with more than thirty shows, including the premiere in Andalusia of ‘Manual para armar un sueño’, by the historic group The Zaranda (‘exiled’ from their region of origin for years).
The Medieval Castle of Olite, in Navarra, is well worth a visit to its festival, which this year presents around thirty shows, including two truly attractive ones: ‘La infamia’, a monologue based on a text by Lydia Cacho, directed by José Martret and performed by Marina Salas; and ‘The wars of our ancestors’, by Miguel Delibes, directed by Claudio Tolcachir and Carmelo Gómez and Miguel Hermoso as interpreters. He Festival of San Javier, in MurciaFinally, it will offer fourteen shows; among them, the premiere of ‘La ilusión conjugal’, by Eric Assous, directed by Antonio Hortelano; or ‘Ugly illness and very sad death of Queen Isabella I, from La Calorica.
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