Ópera Flamenca

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The Ópera Flamenca was a form of staging flamenco performances on a large scale. It was popular from the 1920s through the 1950s.

Characteristic

According to tradition, Pastora Cruz Vargas, mother of La Niña de los Peines , suggested the name Ópera Flamenca to the impresario Carlos Hernández Vedrines . The latter produced a large number of performances from 1924. Allegedly, economic reasons were decisive for the choice of name: opera performances were taxed at 3% in Spain at that time, while vaudeville performances were taxed at 10%. Another interpretation is that the impresarios wanted to counter the disreputable reputation of flamenco with a euphemistic name.

The Ópera Flamenca had the following characteristics:

  • An ensemble of artists and technicians who work together on a regular basis went on tours with a fixed program each.
  • These tours were organized by an impresario.
  • The role was later partly taken over by one of the artists.
  • Well-known and lesser-known artists worked together in the ensemble.
  • The program covered different genres, including flamenco, Andalusian or Spanish music and singing, orchestral pieces, small plays.
  • The tours usually took place in spring and summer.
  • The performances always took place in places that could accommodate a large audience of several thousand people: bullring, theaters, circuses.
  • In the course of time, various technical aids that were new at that time were used, for example loudspeakers, lighting technology, complex stage technology.

The Ópera Flamenca: a decadent phenomenon?

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The Ópera Flamenca was on the one hand popular and offered well-known artists a good living. On the other hand, it has been and is heavily criticized by musicians and writers who value flamenco as an art form: it has led to a maximum flattening and stagnation of flamenco singing. Manuel de Falla and Federico García Lorca should be mentioned as critics from the very beginning.

Anselmo González Climent mentioned the following points of criticism in his monograph Flamencología :

  1. Instrumental orchestration at the expense of the vocals and the internal structure.
  2. Roots in the canción andaluza , the Andalusian folk song, at the expense of melodic expression and depth of content.
  3. Degradation of the guitar from soloist noblesse to a mere contributor to ornamentation in the concert body.
  4. Light chants as fandangos , Fandanguillos , Farrucas , Garrotines , Alegrías at the expense of the great songs of the jondo Cante as Seguiriya , soleá and Martinete .
  5. Banalizing the texts . The copla , the song verse flatten from authentic, inspired folk poetry to sentimental urban romance.
  6. Gaiterismo . This word creation means baroque show off, at the expense of Tárab flamenco , the deeply felt passion. Compete to see who has the strongest lungs.
  7. Salon-style stylizations and embellishments, based on bourgeois tastes, with minimal sprinkles of traditional singing.
  8. Alignment with the Zarzuela , adapted to the tastes of tourists and provincials. Folkloric appetizers. Mindless subject.
  9. Total professionalization , organization in companies, integration into the record, radio and film industry.
  10. Renaissance of the tambourine . The tambourine played a respected role in high romantic music, for example in Georges Bizet , Nikolai Rimski-Korsakow , Alexandre Dumas , Prosper Mérimée and others. In the Ópera Flamenca it is limited to the national reference.
  11. Loss of international reputation . Spanish artists and intellectuals stayed away from flamenco. The spiritual center of flamenco is collapsing, singing is losing its prestige.
  12. Periodization . One dedicates oneself more to the actuality than to the truth.
  13. Surrender to the good . The loss of the authentic flamencos is inevitable.

More benevolent critics rate this view as very extreme. Theorists such as Eugenio Cobo, José Manuel Gamboa and José Luis Ortiz Nuevo opposed this ideology of the purity of art for an elitist minority. Quite a number of artists have shone in both serious art and Ópera Flamenca. Through the Ópera Flamenca a number of outstanding artists became known to a large audience, including Antonio Chacón , Manuel Vallejo , La Niña de los Peines, Cojo de Málaga , José Cepero , Niño Medina , Pepe Pinto , Bernardo el de los Lobitos and Juan Varea . Manolo Caracol is mentioned as a notable example . He first won the competition of serious singing, the Concurso de Cante Jondo of 1922, and later used to appear in the Ópera Flamenco.

The reservations about the professionalization of flamenco at that time are seen with different eyes today. It was based on a view that saw flamenco as a folk art whose purity is tarnished by professionalism. For the performance of flamenco at today's high level, professionalism is an essential requirement.

Influences and history

In terms of time, the Ópera Flamenca era follows the era of the cafés cantantes , which had their heyday towards the end of the 19th century. In a sense, Ópera Flamenca can be seen as the continuation of a development that brought flamenco out of the ethnic and family context of the gitanos into the public and made it professional. At the same time, a counter-movement arose which feared that this development would rob flamenco of its authenticity and depth. It culminated in 1922 in the Concurso de Cante Jondo competition in Granada .

The first Óperas Flamencas, directed by Carlos Hernández Vedrines, had pompous titles such as Solemne concierto de ópera flamenca and Colosal espectáculo de ópera flamenca.

Opera comedies such as La copla andaluza by Eduardo Rodríguez from 1924 and the later version of the same title from 1928 by Antonio Quintero Ramírez are closely related to Opera Flamenco . Through these examples it became common practice to sprinkle recitatives between the vocal pieces. Other examples of such opera comedies are:

  • La Petenera by Francisco Serrano and Manuel de Góngora, performed in Madrid in 1927;
  • 1933 Sol y sombra by Antonio Quintero and Pascal Guillén with La Niña de la Puebla ;
  • 1934 Oro y marfil , also by Quintero and Guillén;
  • 1935 Consuelo la Trianera by Julián Sánchez Prieto.

The Ópera Flamenca and related large stage and film performances led to an expansion in flamenco dance. Up until now there was mainly one and only in exceptional cases more than three or four people dancing in a scene, now the great ballet has stepped onto the stage. While the dance interludes were largely based on improvisation so far, a well-designed choreography was now necessary. While many palos were previously only sung and played, a dance has now been invented for practically every form of singing, including the seguiriya, the taranto and the martinete . Dancers like La Argentina , Vicente Escudero , La Argentinita , Pilar López , Alejandro Vega and Antonio Ruiz Soler mixed Spanish dance and flamenco. Compositions by Isaac Albéniz , Manuel de Falla and Joaquín Turina and the ballets El amor brujo and El sombrero de tres picos served as models .

The influence of the Ópera Flamenca on the present should not be underestimated. First-class contemporary singers such as Carmen Linares or Estrella Morente do not shy away from singing the genres that became popular with Ópera Flamenca. The latter interpreted in the film Volver by Pedro Almodóvar the same tango by Carlos Gardel in flamencisierter form. Latin American artists such as Gardel contributed significantly to her in the late period of Ópera Flamenca. In the film Morena Clara by Florián Rey interpreted Imperio Argentina compositions from the Ópera Flamenca. Other well-known names who participated in the Ópera Flamenca are Concha Piquer , Estrellita Castro , Marifé de Triana , Lola Flores , Manolo Escobar , Rocío Jurado , Antonio Molina , Carlos Cano , María Dolores Pradera and Plácido Domingo . Paco de Lucía's posthumous CD Canción Andaluza can be seen as an homage to the genre . It contains, among other things, eight classical pieces from the Ópera Flamenca.

References and comments

  1. ↑ Ángel Álvarez Caballero: El cante flamenco . Alianza Editorial, Madrid 2004, ISBN 978-84-206-4325-0 , p. 231 .
  2. ↑ a b c Juan Vergillos: Conocer el Flamenco . Signatura Ediciones de Andalucía, Sevilla 2009, ISBN 978-84-95122-84-1 , p. 91 .
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g Francisco Gutiérrez Carbajo: La ópera flamenca. In: Ensayos de teatro musical español. Fundación Juan March, accessed October 10, 2018 (Spanish).
  4. ^ A b David Florido del Corral: Historia del Flamenco en Andalucía . Ed .: Universidad de Sevilla. Seville March 22, 2012, p. 37 (Spanish, us.es [PPT]).
  5. ↑ Juan Vergillos: Conocer el Flamenco . S. 90 .
  6. ↑ Ángel Álvarez Caballero: El cante flamenco . S. 229 .
  7. ↑ La Ópera Flamenca, y la primera mitad del siglo XX . In: Flamenco.one . (Spanish, flamenco.one [accessed October 10, 2018]).
  8. ↑ Ángel Álvarez Caballero: El cante flamenco . S. 232-233 .
  9. ↑ José Javier León Sillero: El duende Lorquiano: De hallazgo poético a lugar común flamenco . Dissertation. Ed .: Universidad de Granada. Granada 2015, p. 103 ( ugr.es [PDF]).
  10. ↑ Manuel Ríos Ruiz: Ayer y hoy del cante flamenco . Ediciones ISTMO, Tres Cantos (Madrid) 1997, ISBN 978-84-7090-311-3 , pp. 55 .
  11. ↑ Juan Vergillos: Conocer el Flamenco . S. 88 .
  12. ↑ Kersten Knipp: Flamenco . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 978-3-518-45824-2 , p. 134-137 .
  13. ↑ Solemn concert of the Ópera Flamenca
  14. ↑ Colossal drama of the Ópera Flamenca
  15. ↑ La Niña de la Puebla. In: El arte de vivir el flamenco. Retrieved October 11, 2018 (Spanish).
  16. ↑ Rocío Santiago Nogales: Julián Sánchez-Prieto: Los estrenos teatrales de un pastor-poeta . In: UNED Revista Signa . tape 26 , 2017, p. 572 ( cervantesvirtual.com [PDF]).
  17. ↑ Juan Vergillos: Conocer el Flamenco . S. 93 .
  18. ↑ Morena Clara. In: IMdB. Retrieved October 11, 2018 .
  19. ↑ El disco póstumo de Paco de Lucía . In: ELMUNDO . April 26, 2014 (Spanish, elmundo.es [accessed October 11, 2018]).