LA CELESTINA, 9 SEPTIEMBRE, ESTRENO ABSOLUTO EN EL TEATRO DE LA ZARZUELA. PATRICIA HIGHSMITH: HER DIARIES AND NOTEBOOKS

La Celestina

Tragicomedia lírica en cuatro actos

Versión en concierto

Música de FELIPE PEDRELL
Libreto basado en la tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea de Fernando de Rojas

© Edición de David Ferreiro Carballo (Instituto Complutense de Ciencias Musicales / Sociedad Española de Musicología, 2022). 

Los estatutos que rigen el espíritu y el funcionamiento del Teatro de la Zarzuela lo dicen bien claro: el coliseo erigido en 1856 debe, sin ningún tipo de pretexto, salvaguardar y difundir el género lírico español. Por ello, abrirá la temporada con un el estreno absoluto de una ópera española. Hablamos de ‘La Celestina’ de Felipe Pedrell, obra de madurez del compositor catalán que sonará por primera vez porque a pesar de que estaba previsto estrenarla en el Liceo en el año 1902, nunca vio la luz. Lo único que se oyó fueron un par de escenas que Pau Casal incluyó en un concierto en 1921 para homenajear al compositor. Se trata de una obra de gran importancia que influyó a compositores posteriores, en la que Pedrell plasma su idea de la ópera nacional. En ‘La Celestina’ queda patente el enorme respeto del compositor por la obra original de Rojas del siglo XV y se une a las recuperaciones que con esta temporada ya suman 16 títulos rescatados del olvido.

Fechas y Horarios

Viernes 9 y domingo 11 de septiembre de 2022
(20:00 horas y 18:00 horas, respectivamente)

Ficha Artística

Dirección musical

GUILLERMO GARCÍA CALVO

Reparto

Celestina MAITE BEAUMONT; Melibea MIREN URBIETA-VEGA; Calisto ANDEKA GORROTXATEGI;Sempronio JUAN JESÚS RODRÍGUEZ;Parmeno SIMÓN ORFILA; Lucrecia SOFÍA ESPARZA; Elicia LUCÍA TAVIRA; Areusa GEMMA COMA-ALABERT; Pleberio JAVIER CASTAÑEDA; Tristán MAR ESTEVE; Sosia ISAAC GALÁN.

Orquesta de la Comunidad de Madrid

Titular del Teatro de La Zarzuela

Coro del Teatro de La Zarzuela

Director:

Antonio Fauró

AND

PATRICIA HIGHSMITH, HER DIARIES AND NOTEBOOKS

1941-1995

Publishing for the centenary of her birth, Patricia Highsmith’s diaries “offer the most complete picture ever published” of the canonical author (New York Times)

Relegated to the genre of mystery during her lifetime, Patricia Highsmith is now recognized as one of “our greatest modernist writers” (Gore Vidal). Beloved by fans who were unaware of the real psychological turmoil behind her prose, the famously secretive Highsmith refused to authorize a biography, instead sequestering herself in her Switzerland home in her final years. Posthumously, her devoted editor Anna von Planta discovered her diaries and notebooks in 1995, tucked in a closet—with tantalizing instructions to be read.

For years thereafter, von Planta meticulously culled from over eight thousand pages to help reveal the inscrutable figure behind the legendary pen. Beginning with her junior year at Barnard in 1941, Highsmith ritualistically kept a diary and notebook—the former to catalog her day, the latter to brainstorm stories and hone her craft. This volume weaves diary and notebook simultaneously, exhibiting precisely how Highsmith’s personal affairs seeped into her fiction—and the sheer darkness of her own imagination.

Charming yet teetering on the egotistical, young “Pat” lays bare her dizzying social life in 1940s Greenwich Village, barhopping with Judy Holliday and Jane Bowles, among others. Alongside Flannery O’Conner and Chester Himes, she attended—at the recommendation of Truman Capote—the Yaddo artist colony in 1948, where she drafted Strangers on a Train. Published in 1950 and soon adapted by Alfred Hitchcock, this debut novel brought recognition and brief financial security, but left a heartsick Highsmith agonizing: “What is the life I choose?”

Providing extraordinary insights into gender and sexuality in mid-twentieth-century America, Highsmith’s diaries convey her euphoria writing The Price of Salt (1951). Yet her sophomore novel would have to be published under a pseudonym, so as not to tarnish her reputation. Indeed, no one could anticipate commercial reception for a novel depicting love between two women in the McCarthy era. Seeking relief from America, Highsmith catalogs her peripatetic years in Europe, subsisting on cigarettes and growing more bigoted and satirical with age. After a stay in Positano with a new lover, she reflects in her notebooks on being an expat, and gleefully conjures the unforgettable The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955); it would be this sociopathic antihero who would finally solidify her true fame.

At once lovable, detestable, and mesmerizing, Highsmith put her turbulent life to paper for five decades, acutely aware there must be “a few usable things in literature.” A memoir as significant in our own century as Sylvia Plath’s journals and Simone de Beauvoir’s writings were to another time, Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks is an historic work that chronicles a woman’s rise against the conventional tide to unparalleled literary prominence.

https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324090991