RASCAMOÑOS | LAZOS CÓMICOS ENTRE RAMÓN DE LA CRUZ Y RODRÍGUEZ DE HITA

Texts by Ramón de la Cruz (1731-1794) and music by Antonio Rodríguez de Hita (ca. 1724-1787)

«Usted ha de hacer zarzuelas que tengan menos defectos que las mejores tragedias». (Ramón de la Cruz, El poeta aburrido, 1773) In an age when wearing a ribbon or a caramba (or “rascamoños”) was a political and social statement, the sainetes of D. Ramón de la Cruz portrayed everyday life in Madrid in a fresh, satirical way, from the earthy scenes of the common people to the customs of the middle class. His verses found their ideal soundscape in the music of Antonio Rodríguez de Hita, with whom he worked successfully on the burlesque zarzuelas Las labradoras de Murcia and Las segadoras de Vallecas (of the latter only three arias survive, in the Bibliothèque nationale de France), as well as on the sainetes Las payas celosas and La república de las mujeres (which D. Ramón translated in 1772 from Les amazones modernes by Marc-Antoine Legrand).

In this happy partnership of playwright and composer, women take absolute centre stage: not royalty, nor the heroines of his heroic zarzuelas, but farm women, harvesters, country girls, women with the daring to seek a longed-for place in the world. Don Ramón, who drew a good deal of criticism for his excessive costumbrismo, controlled the programming of Madrid's theatres, the Cruz and the Príncipe, in the 1770s. Adaptations of Italian opere buffe likewise filled the programmes, although the original libretti were often altered and new music was composed, such as the music by Rodríguez de Hita recovered here for El loco vano y valiente (an unattributed adaptation of Il pazzo glorioso). From a contemporary revision of those performances, following that tradition of adaptation and updating, RASCAMOÑOS presents a free version in the form of a dramatised recital: a reinterpretation of verse in the mouths of eighteenth-century women; an extraordinary reading of sisterhood and protest; a delight in the words and constructions of the stage of the day, which reach us now on new semantic planes of clear-sighted relevance.

Rocío Bernal, actress Olalla Alemán, soprano Silvia Márquez, harpsichord and musical direction Curro Carreres, dramaturgy and stage direction