▷ La hija del aire teatro de la comedia

punishment without vengeance summary

From that distant performance at María Guerrero, we have to make a leap of almost a century. The young Centro Dramático Nacional in 1981, which at that time was directed by Nuria Espert, José Luis Gómez and Ramón Tamayo, programmed this play in a version by philologist Francisco Ruiz Ramón, who had published a critical edition of this text in the prestigious Letras Hispánicas de Cátedra collection, to celebrate the third centenary of the author’s birth.

From that distant representation of María Guerrero, we have to make a leap of almost a century. The young Centro Dramático Nacional in 1981, which at that time was directed by Nuria Espert, José Luis Gómez and Ramón Tamayo, programmed this play in a version by philologist Francisco Ruiz Ramón, who had published a critical edition of this text in the prestigious Letras Hispánicas de Cátedra collection, to celebrate the third centenary of the author’s birth.

We leave here some photographs of the stagings by Pasqual and Lavelli, plus a very special one: María Guerrero as the Queen of Babylon in 1896. In the video: Ana Belén and Carlos Lemos in 1981; Blanca Portillo and the Costa Rican actor Luis Herrera in 2004.

el castigo sin venganza lope

This production is preceded by two others of resounding success in our country: the one directed by Lluís Pasqual in 1981, with Ana Belén as the leading actress, which I did not have the opportunity to see. And that of Jorge Lavelli with Blanca Portillo in 2004, which I still remember as one of the most resounding and spectacular works of the actress, in a version of more than three hours around a scenery that suggested the ziggurat of the Tower of Babylon.

Poveda, an actress of undoubted worth especially with the baroque theater, gives perfectly the type by physique, attitude and technique to face a character representation of the demonic, capable of subjugating his feelings to his ambition for power, which is his main motivation. The role requires her to undergo a metamorphosis in her rise to power, as she gets to play several characters: Semiramis rescued from the cave as a beautiful savage who evolves into a cautious and shrewd courtesan, then into an ambitious and murderous queen, and ends up supplanting her son Ninias.

the daughter of the air summary

Wars, storms, dethronements, punishments, deaths, power conflicts and the tragic condition of a destiny marked by the rivalry between goddesses alien to human reality. These are the elements that best define what is known by all as one of Calderón’s greatest scenic jewels.

His best texts, especially the tragedies, lead us to the deep abysses of power and its vital consequences: La hija del aire and Semíramis are a scenic prodigy that continues to speak to us of the unprecedented and surprising of human evolution.

the punishment without revenge monologue

Eight thousand verses “and some”, in octo, hepta and hendecasyllables with assonant and consonant rhyme are the vehicle in which Benjamín Prado and Mario Gas have climbed on to bring the Calderón de la Barca of “La hija del aire” to the current spectator, to the man of today, without “alamares” but “insufflated” with all his poetry.

Starring Marta Poveda, the play, with set design by Ezio Frigerio and costumes by Franca Squarcapino, is Gas’ debut in classical theater: “I have always loved the Golden Age but life takes you down different paths…. Maybe now I won’t stop doing it,” laughed the director.

That his debut in this genre has been with a piece “so wise”, that goes “from individual to collective conflict” and that “approaches the abyss of human contradiction”, fills him with joy and hope in the survival of texts that are classics because “they continue to say things to the man of today”.

“The Daughter of the Air”, a “monumental” text written in two parts, focuses on Semiramis, in the same tragic line of the human condition as another of his great characters, Sigismund, and is equally plagued by wars, storms, dethronements, punishments and deaths.