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Federico García Lorca (5 June 1898 – 19 August 1936)
Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca was a Spanish poet,
dramatist and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international
recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of '27. He may have
been shot by anti-communist forces during the Spanish Civil War In 2008, a
Spanish judge opened an investigation into Lorca's death. The Garcia Lorca
family eventually dropped objections to the excavation of a potential
gravesite near Alfacar. However, no human remains were found.
Life and career
Early years
García Lorca was born on 5 June 1898, in Fuente Vaqueros, a small town a
few miles west of Granada, southern Spain.His father, Federico García
Rodríguez, was a landowner with a farm in the fertile vega surrounding
Granada and a comfortable villa in the heart of the city. García Rodríguez
saw his fortunes rise with a boom in the sugar industry. García Lorca's
mother, Vicenta Lorca Romero, was a teacher and gifted pianist. In 1909,
when the boy was 11, his family moved to the city of Granada. For the rest
of his life, he maintained the importance of living close to the natural world,
praising his upbringing in the country. In 1915, after graduating from
secondary school, García Lorca attended Sacred Heart University. During this
time his studies included law, literature and composition. Throughout his
adolescence he felt a deeper affinity for theatre and music than literature,
training fully as a classical pianist, his first artistic inspirations arising from
the scores of Debussy, Chopin and Beethoven. Later, with his friendship with
composer Manuel de Falla Spanish folklore became his muse. García Lorca
did not begin a career in writing until his piano teacher died in 1916 and his
first prose works such as "Nocturne", "Ballade" and "Sonata" drew on
musical forms. His milieu of young artists gathered in El Rinconcillo at the
cafe Alameda in Granada. During 1916 and 1917, García Lorca traveled
throughout Castile, Léon, and Galicia, in northern Spain, with a professor of
his university, who also encouraged him to write his first book, Impresiones
y Paisajes (Impressions and Landscapes – published 1918). Don Fernando de
los Rios persuaded García Lorca's parents to allow the boy to enrol at the
progressive, Oxbridge-inspired Residencia de estudiantes in Madrid in 1919.
As a young writer
At the Residencia de estudiantes in Madrid García Lorca befriended Manuel
de Falla, Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí and many other creative artists who
were, or would become, influential across Spain. He was taken under the
wing of the poet Juan Ramon Jimenez, becoming close to playwright Eduardo
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Marquina and Gregorio Martínez Sierra, the Director of Madrid's Teatro
Eslava.In 1919–20, at Sierra's invitation, he wrote and staged his first play,
El maleficio de la mariposa (The Butterfly's Evil Spell). It was a verse play
dramatising the impossible love between a cockroach and a butterfly, with a
supporting cast of other insects; it was laughed off stage by an
unappreciative public after only four performances and influenced García
Lorca's attitude to the theatre-going public for the rest of his career. He
would later claim that Mariana Pineda, written in 1927, was, in fact, his first
play. During the time at the Residencia de estudiantes he pursued degrees in
law and philosophy, though he had more interest in writing than study.
García Lorca's first book of poems was published in 1921, collecting work
written from 1918 and selected with the help of his brother Francisco. They
concern the themes of religious faith, isolation and nature that had filled his
prose reflections. Early in 1922 at Granada García Lorca joined the composer
Manuel de Falla in order to promote the Concurso de Cante Jondo, a festival
dedicated to enhance flamenco performance. The year before Lorca had
begun to write his Poema del cante jondo ("Poem of the deep song", not
published until 1931), so he naturally composed an essay on the art of
flamenco, and began to speak publicly in support of the Concurso. At the
music festival in June he met the celebrated Manuel Torre, a flamenco
cantaor. The next year in Granada he also collaborated with Falla and others
on the musical production of a play for children, adapted by Lorca from an
Andalucian story. Inspired by the same structural form of sequence as "Deep
song", his collection Suites (1923) was never finished and not published until
1983.
Over the next few years García Lorca became increasingly involved in Spain's
avant-garde. He published poetry collections including Canciones (Songs)
and Romancero Gitano (Gypsy Ballads, 1928), which became his best known
book of poetry. It was a highly stylised imitation of the ballads and poems
that were still being told throughout the Spanish countryside. Philologists
such as Ramón Menéndez Pidal worked with him to collect versions from the
south, many in existence since the Middle Ages. García Lorca describes the
work as a "carved altar piece" of Andalusia with "gypsies, horses, archangels,
planets, its Jewish and Roman breezes, rivers, crimes, the everyday touch of
the smuggler and the celestial note of the naked children of Córdoba. A book
that hardly expresses visible Andalusia at all, but where the hidden Andalusia
trembles". In 1928, the book brought him fame across Spain and the
Hispanic world, and he only gained notability as a playwright much later. For
the rest of his life, the writer would search for the elements of Andaluce
culture, trying to find its essence without resorting to the "picturesque" or
the cliched use of "local colour".
His second play, Mariana Pineda, with stage settings by Salvador Dalí,
opened to great acclaim in Barcelona in 1927. In 1926, García Lorca wrote
the play The Shoemaker's Prodigious Wife, which would not be shown until
the early 1930s. It was a farce about fantasy, based on the relationship
between a flirtatious, petulant wife and a hen-pecked shoemaker.
From 1925 to 1928 he was passionately involved with Dalí. The friendship
with Lorca had a strong element of mutual passion, but Dalí (decades later)
rejected the erotic advances of the poet. With the success of "Gypsy
Ballads", came an estrangement from Dali and the breakdown of a love affair
with sculptor Emilio Soriano Aladrén. These brought on an increasing
depression, a situation exacerbated by his anguish over his homosexuality.
He felt he was trapped between the persona of the successful author, which
he was forced to maintain in public, and the tortured, authentic self, which
he could only acknowledge in private. He also had the sense that he was
being pigeon-holed as a "gypsy poet". He wrote: "The gypsies are a theme.
And nothing more. I could just as well be a poet of sewing needles or
hydraulic landscapes. Besides, this gypsyism gives me the appearance of an
uncultured, ignorant and primitive poet that you know very well I’m not. I
don't want to be typecast". Growing estrangement between García Lorca and
his closest friends reached its climax when surrealists Dalí and Luis Buñuel
collaborated on their 1929 film Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog).
García Lorca interpreted it, perhaps erroneously, as a vicious attack upon
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himself. At this time Dalí also met his future wife Gala. Aware of these
problems (though not perhaps of their causes), García Lorca's family
arranged for him to take a lengthy visit to the United States in 1929–30.
Green wind. Green branches.
The ship out on the sea
and the horse on the mountain.
With the shadow at the waist
she dreams on her balcony,
green flesh, green hair,
with eyes of cold silver.
"Romance Sonámbulo" ("Ballad of the Sleepwalker)"
In June 1929, García Lorca travelled to America with Fernando de los Rios on
the SS Olympic, a sister liner to the Titanic.They stayed mostly in New York
City, where Rios started a lecture tour and García Lorca enrolled at Columbia
University School of General Studies, funded by his parents. He studied
English but, as before, was more absorbed by writing than study. He also
spent time in Vermont and later in Havana, Cuba. His collection Poeta en
Nueva York (A poet in New York, published posthumously in 1942) explores
alienation and isolation through some graphically experimental poetic
techniques and was influenced by the Wall Street crash which he personally
witnessed. This condemnation of urban capitalist society and materialistic
modernity was a sharp departure from his earlier work and label as a
folklorist. His play of this time, El Público (The Public), was not published
until the late 1970s and has never been published in its entirety, the
manuscript lost. However, the Hispanic Society of America in New York City
retains several of his personal letters.
The Republic
García Lorca's return to Spain in 1930 coincided with the fall of the
dictatorship of Primo de Rivera and the re-establishment of the Spanish
Republic. In 1931, García Lorca was appointed as director of a university
student theatre company, Teatro Universitario la Barraca (The Shack). This
was funded by the Second Republic's Ministry of Education, and it was
charged with touring Spain's remotest rural areas in order to introduce
audiences to radically modern interpretations of classic Spanish theatre free
of charge. With a portable stage, and little equipment, they sought to bring
theatre to people who had never seen any, with García Lorca directing as
well as acting. He commented: "Outside of Madrid, the theatre, which is in its
very essence a part of the life of the people, is almost dead, and the people
suffer accordingly, as they would if they had lost their two eyes, or ears, or a
sense of taste. We [La Barraca] are going to give it back to them". His
experiences of travelling through impoverished rural Spain and New York,
(particularly amongst the disenfranchised African American population),
transformed him into a passionate advocate of the theatre of social action.
He wrote "The theatre is a school of weeping and of laughter, a free forum,
where men can question norms that are outmoded or mistaken and explain
with living example the eternal norms of the human heart".
While touring with La Barraca, García Lorca wrote his now best-known plays,
the Rural Trilogy of Bodas de Sangre (Blood Wedding), Yerma and La Casa
de Bernarda Alba (The House of Bernarda Alba), which all rebelled against
the norms of bourgeois Spanish society. He called for a rediscovery of the
roots of European theatre and the questioning of comfortable conventions
such as the popular drawing room comedies of the time. His work challenged
the accepted role of women in society and explored taboo issues of
homoeroticism and class. García Lorca wrote little poetry in this last period of
his life, declaring in 1936, “theatre is poetry that rises from the book and
becomes human enough to talk and shout, weep and despair.”
Travelling to Buenos Aires in 1933 to give lectures and direct the Argentine
premiere of Blood Wedding, García Lorca spoke of his distilled theories on
artistic creation and performance in the famous lecture Play and Theory of
the Duende. This attempted to define a schema of artistic inspiration,
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arguing that great art depends upon a vivid awareness of death, connection
with a nation's soil, and an acknowledgment of the limitations of reason.
As well as returning to the classical roots of theatre, García Lorca also turned
to traditional forms in poetry. His last poetic work Sonnets to his dark love
(1936) was inspired by a passion for Rafael Rodriguez Rapun, secretary of La
Barraca. The love sonnets are inspired by the 16th century poet San Juan de
la Cruz. La Barraca's subsidy was cut in half by the new government in 1934,
and its last performance was given in April 1936.
Lorca kept Huerta de San Vicente as his summer house in Granada from
1926 to 1936. Here he wrote, totally or in part, some of his major works,
among them When Five Years Pass (Así que pasen cinco años) (1931), Blood
Wedding (Bodas de sangre) (1932), Yerma (1934) and Diván del Tamarit
(1931–1936). The poet lived in the Huerta de San Vicente in the days just
before his arrest and assassination in August 1936.
Although García Lorca's artwork doesn't often receive attention he was also a
keen artist.
Death
García Lorca left Madrid for his family home in Granada only three days
before the Spanish Civil War broke out (July 1936).The Spanish political and
social climate had greatly intensified after the murder of prominent
monarchist and anti-Popular Front spokesman José Calvo Sotelo by
Republican Assault Guards (Guardia de Asalto).[26] García Lorca knew that
he would be suspect to the rising right wing for his outspoken liberal
views.On 18 August, his brother-in-law, Manuel Fernández-Montesinos, the
leftist mayor of Granada, was shot. Lorca was arrested that same afternoon.
It is thought that García Lorca was shot and killed by Nationalist militia on 19
August 1936. The author Ian Gibson in his book The Assassination of García
Lorca alleges that he was shot with three others (Joaquin Arcollas Cabezas,
Francisco Galadi Mergal and Dioscoro Galindo Gonzalez) at a place known as
the Fuente Grande, or Great Fountain in Spanish, which is on the road
between Viznar and Alfacar.
Motives for assassination
Significant controversy remains about the motives and details of Lorca's
murder. Personal, non-political motives have also been suggested. García
Lorca's biographer, Stainton, states that his killers made remarks about his
sexual orientation, suggesting that it played a role in his death. Ian Gibson
suggests that García Lorca's assassination was part of a campaign of mass
killings intended to eliminate supporters of the Marxist Popular Front.
However, Gibson proposes that rivalry between the anti-communist Spanish
Confederation of the Autonomous Right (CEDA) and the Falange was a major
factor in Lorca's death. Former CEDA Parliamentary Deputy Ramon Ruiz
Alonso arrested García Lorca at the Rosales' home, and was the one
responsible for the original denunciation that led to the arrest warrant being
issued.
It has been argued that García Lorca was apolitical and had many friends in
both Republican and Nationalist camps. Gibson disputes this in his 1978 book
about the poet's death. He cites, for example, Mundo Obrero's published
manifesto, which Lorca later signed, and alleges that Lorca was an active
supporter of the Popular Front.[33] Lorca read this manifesto out at a
banquet in honour of fellow poet Rafael Alberti on 9 February 1936.
Many anti-communists were sympathetic to Lorca or assisted him. In the
days before his arrest he found shelter in the house of the artist and leading
Falange member Luis Rosales. Indeed, evidence suggests that Rosales was
very nearly shot as well for helping García Lorca by the Civil Governor
Valdes.The Basque Communist poet Gabriel Celaya wrote in his memoirs that
he once found García Lorca in the company of Falangist José Maria Aizpurua.
Celaya further wrote that Lorca dined every Friday with Falangist founder
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and leader José Antonio Primo de Rivera. On 11 March 1937 an article
appeared in the Falangist press denouncing the murder and lionizing García
Lorca; the article opened: "The finest poet of Imperial Spain has been
assassinated." Jean-Louis Schonberg also put forward the 'homosexual
jealousy' theory.The dossier on the murder, compiled at Franco's request and
referred to by Gibson and others, has yet to surface. The first published
account of an attempt to locate Lorca's grave can be found in British traveller
and Hispanist Gerald Brenan's book 'The Face of Spain'. Despite early
attempts such as Brenan's in 1949, the site remained undiscovered
throughout the Francoist era.
Excavation at Alfácar
In late October 2009, a team of archaeologists and historians from the
University of Granada began excavations outside Alfácar.The site was
identified three decades ago by a man who claimed to have helped dig
Lorca's grave.Lorca was thought to be buried with at least three other men
beside a winding mountain road that connects the villages of Viznar and
Alfácar.
There is a growing desire in Spain to come to terms with the civil war, which
for decades was not openly discussed. The judge in the case, Baltasar
Garzón, formally requested local government and churches to open their files
on the thousands of people who disappeared during the Civil War and under
the dictatorship of General Franco until 1975.
The excavations began at the request of another victim's family. Following a
long-standing objection, the Lorca family also gave their permission. In
October 2009 Francisco Espinola, a spokesman for the Justice Ministry of the
Andalusian regional government, said that after years of pressure García
Lorca's body would "be exhumed in a matter of weeks". Lorca's relatives,
who had initially opposed an exhumation, said they might provide a DNA
sample in order to identify his remains.
In late November 2009, after two weeks of excavating the site, organic
material believed to be human bones was recovered. The remains were
taken to the University of Granada for examination. But in mid December
2009, doubts were raised as to whether the poet's remains would be found.
The dig produced "not one bone, item of clothing or bullet shell", saidBegoña Álvarez, justice minister of Andalucia. She added, "the soil was only
40cm (16in) deep, making it too shallow for a grave."
Censorship
Francisco Franco's Falangist regime placed a general ban on García Lorca's
work, which was not rescinded until 1953. That year, a (censored) Obras
Completas (Complete works) was released. Following this, Bodas de Sangre
(Blood Wedding), Yerma and La casa de Bernarda Alba (The House of
Bernarda Alba) were successfully played on the main Spanish stages. Obras
Completas did not include his late heavily homoerotic Sonnets of Dark Love,
written in November 1935 and shared only with close friends. They were lost
until 1983/4 when they were finally published in draft form (no final
manuscripts have ever been found.) It was only after Franco's death that
García Lorca's life and death could be openly discussed in Spain. This was
due not only to political censorship, but also to the reluctance of the García
Lorca family to allow publication of unfinished poems and plays prior to the
publication of a critical edition of his works.
South African Roman Catholic poet Roy Campbell,
who enthusiastically supported the Nationalists both during and after the
Civil War, later produced acclaimed translations of Lorca's work. In his poem,
The Martyrdom of F. Garcia Lorca, Campbell wrote,
Not only did he lose his life
By shots assassinated:
But with a hammer and a knife
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Was after that -- translated.
Memorials
In Granada, the city of his birth, the Parque Federico Garcia Lorca is
dedicated to his memory and includes the Huerta de San Vicente, the Lorca
family summer home, opened to the public in 1995 as a museum. The
grounds, including nearly two hectares of land, the two adjoining houses,
artworks and the original furnishings have been preserved. There is a new
statue of Lorca on the Avenida de la Constitución in the city centre, and a
new cultural centre bearing his name is currently under construction and will
play a major role in preserving and disseminating his works.
The Parque Federico Garcia Lorca, in Alfacar, is situated close to Fuente
Grande and was the location of the unsuccessful 2009 excavations that failed
to locate Lorca´s resting place. Close to the olive tree indicated by some as
marking the location of the grave, there is a stone memorial to Federico
Garcia Lorca and all victims of the Civil War, 1936-39. Flowers are laid at the
memorial every year on the anniversary of his death, and a commemorative
event including music and readings of the poet´s works is held every year in
the park to mark the anniversary. On the 17th August 2011, to remember
the 75th anniversary of Lorca´s assassination and to celebrate his life and
legacy, this event included dance, song, poetry and dramatic readings and
attracted hundreds of spectators.
At the Barranco de Viznar, between Viznar and Alfacar, there is a memorial
stone bearing the words "Lorca eran todos, 18-8-2002". The Barranco de
Viznar is the site of mass graves and was proposed as another possible
location of the poet´s remains.
García Lorca is honoured by a statue prominently located in Madrid's Plaza de
Santa Ana. Political philosopher David Crocker reports that "the statue, at
least, is still an emblem of the contested past: "each day, the Left puts a red
kerchief on the neck of the statue, and someone from the Right comes later
to take it off."
The Lorca Foundation, directed by Lorca's niece Laura García Lorca, sponsors
the celebration and dissemination of the writer's work and is currently
building the Lorca Centre in Madrid. The Lorca family gave all Lorca's
documentation to the foundation which holds it on their behalf.
Poetry based on Lorca
Greek poet Nikos Kavvadias's poem Federico García Lorca, in Kavvadias'
Marabu collection, is dedicated to the memory of García Lorca and
juxtaposes his death with war crimes in the village of Distomo, Greece, and
in Kessariani in Athens, where the Nazis executed over two hundred people
in each city.
Allen
Ginsberg's poem "A Supermarket in California" makes mention to Lorca
mysteriously acting out with a watermelon.
Spanish poet Luis Cernuda, who is also part of the Generation of '27, wrote
the elegy A un poeta muerto (F.G.L.).
Hungarian poet Miklos Radnoti
also wrote a poem about García Lorca in 1937 entitled Federico García Lorca.
The New York based Spanish language poet Giannina Braschi published El
imperio de los sueños, a poetic homage to Poet in New York (1st edition:
Anthropos editorial del hombre, 1988; 2nd edition: Editorial de la
Universidad de Puerto Rico).
Bob Kaufman
and Gary Mex Glazner have both written tribute poems entitled Lorca.
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Harold Norse
has a poem, We Bumped Off Your Friend the Poet, inspired by a review of
Ian Gibson's Death of Lorca. The poem first appeared in Hotel Nirvana, and
more recently in In the Hub of the Fiery Force, Collected Poems of Harold
Norse 1934–2003
The Spanish poet Antonio
Machado wrote the poem El Crimen Fue en Granada, in reference to
García Lorca's death.
The Turkish poet Turgut Uyar wrote the poem Three Poems For Federico
García Lorca including a line in Spanish:obra completas
The Irish poet Michael Hartnett published an English translation of García
Lorca's poetry. García Lorca is also a recurring character in much of
Hartnett's poetry, most notably in the poem A Farewell to English..
Deep image, a poetic form coined by Jerome
Rothenberg and Robert Kelly, is inspired by García Lorca's Deep Song.
Vietnamese poet Thanh Thao wrote The guitar of Lorca and was set to music
by Thanh Tung.
A Canadian poet named John Mackenzie published several poems inspired by
García Lorca in his collection Letters I Didn't Write, including one titled
Lorca's Lament.
In 1945, Greek poet Odysseas Elytis (Nobel Prize for Literature, 1979)
translated and published part of García Lorca's Romancero Gitano.
Pablo Neruda
wrote Ode to Federico García Lorca (1935) and Eulogy For Federico García
Lorca.
Robert Creeley wrote a poem called "After Lorca" (1952)
Jack Spicer wrote a book of poems called "After Lorca" (1957).
The Russian poet Yevgeni Yevtushenko wrote the poem "When they
murdered Lorca" in which he portrays Lorca as being akin to Don
Quixote—an immortal symbol of one's devotion to his ideals and perpetual
struggle for them.
British poet John Siddique wrote "Desire for Sight (After Lorca)" included in
Poems from a Northern Soul
Musical works based on Lorca
Spanish flamenco singer Camarón de la Isla's album "La leyenda del tiempo"
contains lyrics written by or based on works by Lorca and much of the album
is about his legacy.
Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas composed Homenaje a Federico García
Lorca (a 3 movement work for chamber orchestra) shortly after García
Lorca's death, performing the work in Spain during 1937.[59]
The Italian avant garde composer Luigi Nono wrote a composition in 1953
entitled Epitaffio per Federico García Lorca.
The American composer George Crumb utilizes much of García Lorca's poetry
in works such as his Ancient Voices of Children, his four books of Madrigals,
and parts of his Makrokosmos.
Composer Osvaldo Golijov and playwright David Henry Hwang wrote the
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one-act opera Ainadamar ("Fountain of Tears") about the death of García
Lorca, recalled years later by his friend the actress Margarita Xirgu, who
could not save him. It opened in 2003, with a revised version in 2005. A
recording of the work released in 2006 on the Deutsche Grammophon label
(Catalog #642902) won the 2007 Grammy awards for Best Classical
Contemporary Composition and Best Opera Recording.
Finnish modernist composer Einojuhani Rautavaara has composed Suite de
Lorca ("Lorca-sarja") for a mixed choir to the lyrics of García Lorca's poems
Canción de jinete, El grito, La luna asoma and Malagueña (1972).
The Pogues dramatically retell the story of his murder in the song 'Lorca's
Novena' on their Hell's Ditch album.
Reginald Smith Brindle composed the guitar piece Four Poems of Garcia
Lorca (1975) and El Polifemo de Oro (for guitar, 1982) based on two Lorca
poems Adivinanza de la Guitarra and Las Seis Cuerdas [60]
Composer Dmitri Shostakovich wrote the first two movements of his 14th
Symphony based around García Lorca poems.
The French composer Maurice Ohana set to music García Lorca's poem
Lament for the death of a Bullfighter (Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías)
recorded by the conductor Ataúlfo Argenta in the 1950s
Spanish rock band Marea made a rock version of the poem Romance de la
Guardia Civil española, named "Ciudad de los Gitanos".
In 1968, Joan Baez sang translated renditions of García Lorca's poems,
"Gacela Of The Dark Death" and "Casida of the Lament" on her spoken-word
poetry album, Baptism.
In 1986, Leonard Cohen's English translation of the poem "Pequeño vals
vienés" by García Lorca reached #1 in the Spanish single charts (as "Take
This Waltz", music by Cohen). Cohen has described García Lorca as being his
idol in his youth, and named his daughter Lorca Cohen for that reason.[61]
Missa Lorca by Italian composer Corrado Margutti (2008) is a choral setting
of the Latin Mass text and the poetry of Lorca. U.S. premiere, 2010.
In 1967, composer Mikis Theodorakis set to music seven poems of the
Romancero Gitano – translated into Greek by Odysseas Elitis in 1945. This
work was premiered in Rome in 1970 under the same title. In 1981, under
commission of the Komische Oper in Berlin, the composition was
orchestrated as a symphonic work entitled Lorca. In the mid 1990s,
Theodorakis rearranged the work as an instrumental piece for guitar and
symphony orchestra.
In 1989, American composer Stephen Edward Dick created new music for
Lorca's ballad Romance Sonambulo, based on the original text, and with
permission from Lorca's Estate. The piece is set for solo guitar, baritone and
flamenco dance, and was performed in 1990 at the New Performance Gallery
in San Francisco. The second performance took place in Canoga Park, Los
Angeles in 2004.
American composer Geoffrey Gordon composed Lorca Musica per cello solo
(2000), utilizing themes from his 1995 three act ballet, The House of
Bernarda Alba (1995), for American cellist Elizabeth Morrow. The work was
recorded on Morrow's Soliloquy CD on the Centaur label and was featured at
the 2000 World Cello Congress. Three suites from the ballet, for chamber
orchestra, have also been extracted from the ballet score by the composer.
The Spanish guitarist José María Gallardo del Rey composed his 'Lorca Suite'
in 2003 as a tribute to the great poet. Taking Lorca's folksong compilations
'Canciones Españolas Antiguas' as his starting point, Gallardo del Rey adds
the colour and passion of his native Andalucia, incorporating new
harmonisations and freely composed link passages that fuse classical and
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flamenco techniques.
Catalán composer Joan Amargós wrote Homenatje a Lorca for alto
saxophone in piano. Its three movements are based on three Lorca poems:
Los cuatro muleros, Zorongo, and Anda jaleo.
Composer Brent Parker wrote Lorca's Last Walk for piano solo. This was on
the Grade 7 syllabus of the Royal Irish Academy of Music's piano exams,
2003-2008.
Greek musician Thanasis Papakonstantinou composed ..p.. ....' with part
of Lorca's "Poeta en Nueva York", translated to Greek by Maria Efstathiadi.
Theatre, film and television based on Lorca
Federico García Lorca: A Murder in Granada ( 1976) directed by Humberto
Lopez y Guerra and produced by the Swedish Television. In October 1980 the
New York Times described the transmission of the film by Spanish Television
in June that same year as attracting "one of the largest audiences in the
history of Spanish Television".
Playwright Nilo Cruz wrote the surrealistic drama Lorca in a Green Dress
about the life, death, and imagined afterlife of García Lorca. The play was
first performed in 2003 at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The Cruz play
Beauty of the Father (2010) also features Lorca's ghost as a key character.
British playwright Peter Straughan wrote a play (later adapted as a radio
play) based on García Lorca's life, The Ghost of Federico Garcia Lorca Which
Can Also Be Used as a Table.
TVE broadcast a six hour mini-series based on key episodes on García Lorca's
life in 1987. British actor Nickolas Grace played the poet, although he was
dubbed by a Spanish actor.
There is a 1997 film called The Disappearance of Garcia Lorca, also known as
Death in Granada, based on a biography by Ian Gibson. The film earned an
Imagen Award for best film.
Miguel Hermoso's La Luz Prodigiosa (The End of a Mystery) is a Spanish film
based on Fernando Macías' novel with the same name, which examines what
might have happened if García Lorca had survived his execution at the outset
of the Spanish Civil War.
British Screenwriter Philippa Goslett was inspired by García Lorca's close
friendship with Salvador Dalí. The resulting biopic Little Ashes (2009) depicts
the relationship in the 1920s and 1930s between García Lorca, Dalí, and Luis
Buñuel.
Bodas De Sangre (Blood Wedding) is the first part of a ballet / flamenco film
trilogy directed by Carlos Saura and starring Antonio Gades and Cristina
Hoyos (1981)
Works:
Poetry collections
Impresiones y paisajes (Impressions and Landscapes 1918)
Libro de poemas (Book of Poems 1921)
Poema del cante jondo (Poem of Deep Song; written in 1921 but not
published until 1931)
Suites (written between 1920 and 1923, published posthumously in 1983)
Canciones (Songs written between 1921 and 1924, published in 1927)
Romancero gitano (Gypsy Ballads 1928)
Odes (written 1928)
Poeta en Nueva York (written 1930 - published posthumously in 1940, first
translation into English as The Poet in New York 1940)[54]
Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías (Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías 1935)
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Seis poemas gallegos (Six Galician poems 1935)
Sonetos del amor oscuro (Sonnets of Dark Love 1936, not published until
1983)
Lament for the Death of a Bullfighter and Other Poems (1937)
Primeras canciones (First Songs 1936)
The Tamarit Divan (poems written 1931-4 and not published until after his
death in a special edition of Revista Hispanica Moderna in 1940).
Selected Poems (1941)
Select translations
Poem of the Deep Song - Poema del Canto Jondo, translated by Carlos Bauer
(includes original Spanish verses). City Lights Books, 1987
Poem of the Deep Song, translated by Ralph Angel. Sarabande Books, 2006
Gypsy Ballads: A Version of the Romancero Gitano of Frederico García Lorca
Translated by Michael Hartnett. Goldsmith Press 1973
Plays
Christ: A Religious Tragedy (unfinished 1917)
El maleficio de la mariposa (The Butterfly's Evil Spell: written 1919–20, first
production 1920)
Los títeres de Cachiporra (The Billy-Club Puppets: written 1922-5, first
production 1937)
Retablillo de Don Cristóbal (The Puppet Play of Don Cristóbal: written 1923,
first production 1935)
Mariana Pineda (written 1923–25, first production 1927)
La zapatera prodigiosa (The Shoemaker's Prodigious Wife: written 1926–30,
first production 1930, revised 1933)
Amor de Don Perlimplín con Belisa en su jardín (Love of Don Perlimplín and
Belisa in his Garden: written 1928, first production 1933)
El público (The Public: written 1929–30, first production 1972)
Así que pasen cinco años (When Five Years Pass: written 1931, first
production 1945)
Bodas de sangre (Blood Wedding: written 1932, first production 1933)
Yerma (written 1934, first production 1934)
Doña Rosita la soltera (Doña Rosita the Spinster: written 1935, first
production 1935)
Comedia sin título (Play Without a Title: written 1936, first production 1986)
La casa de Bernarda Alba (The House of Bernarda Alba: written 1936, first
production 1945)
Los sueños de mi prima Aurelia (Dreams of my Cousin Aurelia: unfinished
1938)
Short plays
El paseo de Buster Keaton (Buster Keaton goes for a stroll 1928)
La doncella, el marinero y el estudiante (The Maiden, the Sailor and the
Student 1928)
Quimera (Dream 1928)
Filmscripts
Viaje a la luna (Trip to the Moon 1929)
Operas
Lola, la Comedianta (Lola, the Actress, unfinished collaboration with Manuel
de Falla 1923)
Drawings and paintings
Salvador Dalí, 1925. 160x140mm. Ink and colored pencil on paper. Private
collection, Barcelona, Spain
Bust of a Dead Man, 1932. Ink and colored pencil on paper. Dimension and
location unknown.
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