De antiguo a clásico: Calderón y la génesis del campo teatral (1715–1926) by Sergio Adillo Rufo

Abstract

Reviewed by: De antiguo a clásico: Calderón y la génesis del campo teatral (1715–1926) by Sergio Adillo Rufo Susan Paun de García De antiguo a clásico: Calderón y la génesis del campo teatral (1715–1926). By Sergio Adillo Rufo. Kassel: Reichenberger. 2021. viii+176 pp. €48. ISBN 978–3–967280–06–7. One of the brightest stars of the Spanish Golden Age dramatic constellation, Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600–1681) is said to have written around 120 plays, a modest number compared to the 600–800 attributed to Lope de Vega (1562–1635). Yet, at the beginning of the eighteenth century Calderón's plays accounted for [End Page 267] 25 per cent of all performances in Spain. In the present, he may be a canonical figure but only a handful of his comedias are regularly staged: La vida es sueño, El alcalde de Zalamea, La dama duende. Contextualizing and charting the changing fortunes of Calderón was the subject of Sergio Adillo Rufo's Ph.D. thesis, which he has mined for the publication of no fewer than three books. In the publication under consideration here, Adillo analyses the presence (or absence) of the dramatist on commercial stages in Spain between 1715 and 1926 in relation to how the theatrical profession was progressively articulating itself around Calderón as a field of cultural production. Adillo surveys the nature and evolution of the Calderonian canon and the factors that influenced its configuration. He applies the theories of Pierre Bourdieu to examine how productions of Calderón's plays evolved from being entertainment to symbols of identity, gradually departing from the commercial repertoire to form part of the elite canon. Considering important factors of influence (prevailing cultural trends and tastes as well as reforms and regulations of governmental and cultural institutions, including performance spaces), he seeks to answer an overarching question: why were certain texts performed at certain times? Structured chronologically, the book is divided into two main sections (each comprising three chapters) that discuss performances of Calderón plays within the commercial, political, cultural, and historical currents of the periods in question. In the first section—covering the years between the end of the Spanish War of Succession (1715) and the bicentenary of Calderón's death (1881)—Adillo traces the prehistory of the field of theatre, using performances of Calderón as a case study. The second section surveys the years between 1881 and 1927, a date that gave name to the Generación del 1927, a group of writers who rose to prominence in the late 1920s, many of whom produced important commemorative editions of the poetry of Luis de Góngora to mark the tercentenary of his death. Chapter 1 focuses on late baroque productions, contrasting what survived from the previous century and what was new in the first half of the eighteenth century, or to be precise, until 1765, when autos sacramentales were prohibited. Chapter 2 reviews the effects on the repertoire of successive (attempted) reforms of theatre from 1765 until the beginning of the nineteenth century. In Chapter 3 Adillo turns to the period from the War of Independence until the liberalization of commercial theatre in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, noting that with the beginnings of a 'teatro nacional' and the incipient field of theatre (seen as art, not an industry subject to the market rules of supply and demand), Calderón was becoming a figure around whom national identity could be articulated. Chapter 4 concentrates exclusively on the celebrations of the bicentenary of Calderón's death and the importance they had in officially consolidating his canonical status. Chapter 5, covering the reign of Alfonso XII and the first years of the regency of María Cristina, reviews how famous actors (Rafael Calvo, Antonio Vico, and María Guerrero) kept 'classic' Spanish theatre on the stage at the end of the century as a cornerstone of the relationship they established with the dominant class that constituted their audience. Adillo observes that Calderón was by this time [End Page 268] an emblem of national identity and sign...