Washington, Apr 19 (EFE).- One poet and another composer. The first homosexual and the second a devout Catholic: Federico García Lorca and Manuel de Falla overcame apparent barriers, forging a friendship that has reached the stages of Washington on the centenary of “El retablo de Maese Pedro”.
“Entwined: a double feature” offered the American public a double show this Wednesday, first with a review of the connections between the two artists, “Entwined: Love’s Magicians”, and second with “El retablo de Maese Pedro” itself, a magnum opus de Falla that was heard for the first time in Paris on March 23, 1923.
The friendship between them arose in 1920. Falla (1876-1946) had settled in Granada and was already an established composer when he met Lorca (1898-1936), at that time a young man in his twenties who soon became part of his group. of social gathering
“For me, Don Manuel is a saint,” says Lorca in that work, in which the poet is incarnated by the actor of Puerto Rican origin Robin de Jesús and the composer by the American David Strathairn, nominated for an Oscar for “Good Night, and Good Luck” (2006).
The two shows, with only one scheduled performance, this Wednesday, have the Kennedy Center as their stage. Derek Goldman conducts “Entwined: Love’s Magicians”, while the orchestra and El Retablo are led by Ángel Gil-Ordóñez and his PostClassical Ensemble, founded in 2003.
“El Retablo de Maese Pedro”, an opera for puppets based on chapters XXV and XXVI of the second part of Don Quixote, led Falla to introduce Spain to modernism in 1923, Gil-Ordóñez explained to EFE.
And he did it “looking to the past, to the golden age of Spain, to Don Quixote, revisiting it with the language of the 20th century.” With these ingredients, he maintained, “he left the whole world stunned”, and the idea that in the US capital it is preceded by that other work about the author and Lorca helps to put both both and Spanish culture in context.
Because the trip offered by this joint representation stops at the civil war (1936-1939), at the assassination of Lorca by Franco’s forces, at the Cante Jondo Contest promoted by both artists in 1922 or at the decline of Falla in Argentina, the country where he died.
“If I said that he is one of my best friends it would be half true. He is one of the people I admire the most from all points of view. I would like you to see in Federico an extension of myself”, says the Falla embodied by Strathairn.
The beauty of their relationship, the actor told EFE, is that their own personal differences were not an obstacle. “Today there is so much division over beliefs, religious behavior or identity that the duty and responsibility of art is to bring people together.”
In “Entwined: Love’s Magicians” literature, visual and oral storytelling, music, dance and singing are mixed. With Sonia Olla as bailaora, Ismael Fernández as cantaor and Ricardo Marlow on guitar, the “collage” that hits the stage is a small summary of the Spanish essence.
Robin de Jesús celebrates that, even though it is in English, the theme maintains the power to reach people.
For him, “as a gay man and a man of the theater,” as he explains, Lorca is a reference: “He changed what people think theater is and changed the political conversation about who can be in the theater,” added the actor, who on Broadway has participated in major productions such as “RENT”, “Wicked” or “La cage aux folles”.
The musical director, Gil-Ordóñez, believes that Spain owes Lorca and Falla “universality”. “They were very local, but at the same time that deep locality makes them totally universal”, he points out about these two artists “very united by that traditional, vernacular thing, from Andalusia”.
The representation at the Kennedy Center is part of the Spanish Cultural Week in Washington, an initiative of the Spanish embassy to commemorate the centenary of “El retablo de Maese Pedro” and in which Agencia EFE collaborates with a selection of photographs of Falla and Lorca from his archive and exhibited in that cultural center.
