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)

“You must write zarzuelas that have fewer flaws than the best tragedies.” (Ramón de la Cruz, El poeta aburrido, 1773) In an age when wearing a ribbon or a caramba (or “rascamoños”) amounted to a political and social statement, the sainetes of D. Ramón de la Cruz portrayed everyday life in Madrid with freshness and satire, from the earthy scenes of the common people to the customs of the middle class. His verses found their ideal sonic setting 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 Biblioteca Nacional de Francia), 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, reapers and country girls, women of daring in pursuit of a longed-for standing. Don Ramón, who drew a fair amount of criticism for overdoing costumbrismo, held in his hands the programming of Madrid's theatres of the Cruz and the Príncipe in the 1770s. Adaptations of Italian opere buffe likewise filled the programmes, although the original librettos were often altered and new music was composed, such as that of Rodríguez de Hita recovered here for El loco vano y valiente (an unattributed adaptation of Il pazzo glorioso). From a contemporary revisiting of those performances, following that tradition of adaptation and updating, RASCAMOÑOS presents a free version in the form of a dramatised recital: a reimagining of verse in the mouths of eighteenth-century women; an extraordinary reading of sisterhood and denunciation; and a celebration of 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