Imagine that one night, while gazing at the box, The death of Lucretia at the Museum of the Prado of Madrid, you can hear the thoughts of that girl the fateful night that, according to classic legend, she was raped by Sexto Tarquinio, son of the last king of Rome, narrated by the very Shakespeare: “Take the wolf to its prey. The faithful lamb cries out, / until, with the wool drowns out their cries, /, burying her cries between her sweet lips”.
Imagine after that in another room of the same museum appears to him doña Rosita, the sad spinster of Lorca, venting their bitterness before the picture of a young man in the NINETEENTH century in a wedding dress, about to marry a man she detests, portrayed in all its hopelessness by Antonio Muñoz Degrain: “Everything is finished… and yet, with all the lost illusion, I go to bed, and I wake up with the most terrible of the feelings, that is the feeling of having hope is dead”.
expand photo Núria Espert, in the first instance, with ‘The three Graces’ by Rubens in the background. ALBERTO NEVADO
Posts to dream, imagine also that, at a stop before The garden of Delight, someone whispers in your ear the poem the Bosco of Rafael Alberti: “…to Love and to dance / drink and jump / sing and laugh / smell and touch / eat, fornicate, and / sleep and sleep / cry and to cry./ Mandroque, mandroque, / devil palitroque…”.
This more or less was what happened last night on the unique evening organized by the National Company of Classical Theatre (CNTC), at a gala entitled Echoes of the Prado, to join in the celebration of the bicentenary of the museum: in the background, projected on a large screen, followed some of the more famous pictures of the gallery; while, on the tables, 13 great figures of the Spanish scene staged theatrical texts related to these paintings. It happened in the Teatro de la Comedia in Madrid, the headquarters of the CNTC, and it was live broadcasted in the hall of the museum.
The dialogue between visual arts and theatre is nothing new, as recalled by the director of the CNTC, Helena Pimenta, at the start of the evening: “a great Many painters have been inspired by theatrical scenes to compose his canvases. And vice versa, also a lot of playwrights have created works based on paintings. And don’t forget that many artists have turned their ideas plastic in the scenarios, such as Picasso and Dalí”. But the night of last night possibly unrepeatable, because it is difficult to gather a roster of interpreters as follows: Mario Gas, Josep Maria Flotats, Blanca Portillo, Núria Espert, josep Maria Pou, Aitana Sánchez Gijón, Verónica Forqué, Emilio Gutiérrez Caba, Gonzalo de Castro, Vicky Peña, Manuela Velasco (replacing his aunt Concha Velasco, originally scheduled), José Luis Gómez and Ana Belén (accompanied at the piano by his son David San José.
One after another paraded across the stage to bring to life for a few minutes to paintings of Velázquez, Botticelli, Matias Moreno Gonzalez, Eduardo Rosales, Angel Lizcano Monedero, Rafael Sanzio, Antonio Muñoz Degrain, Goya, Francisco Collantes, Francisco Padilla Venüsbet and Ortiz, El Bosco, Rubens, Titian, and Zurbarán, supported by texts of Buero Vallejo, Boccaccio, Calderon, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Clarin, Lorca, Valle-Inclán, Marguerite Yourcenar, Ernesto Caballero and Rafael Alberti, in addition of a song from Victor Manuel, Spain on a white shirt, performed by Ana Belén with The shootings of Goya in the background.
actors ‘Echoes from the Prado’ pose with the minister of Culture, José Guirao, director general of the INAEM, Amaya de Miguel, and the director of the CNTC, Helena Pimenta. ALBERTO NEVADO
The pairing artistic gave great moments of theatre. For example, when Mario Gas began to scrutinize The maids of honour, helped by a text by Buero Vallejo, to almost make them talk: “Look at those characters that we see as ghosts living in the past. Or maybe the ghost is yourself.” Or when Emilio Gutiérrez Caba and Gonzalo Castro interpreted the final dialog of Lights of Bohemia, that in the Valle-Inclán exposes his theory on the grotesque, while the background is projected several esperpentos of Goya.
Blanca Portillo recited the famous monologue of Segismundo in life is a dream while it is projected to the canvas, The two dreams (1882), of Matias Moreno Gonzalez, in which a cleric sleeps supported in the tomb carved out of a noble. Núria Espert recreated with horror the rape of Lucretia and Verónica Forqué was thrilled with the parliament more bitter of Doña Rosita. José María Pou gave voice to Don Quixote, represented in many paintings of the Prado. Aitana Sánchez Gijón threw the jealous husband of the Regent before the portrait of a cardinal. Pou lent his voice to Don Quixote, depicted in several paintings of the Prado. Vicky Peña recounted with the power of the confession without remorse of Clitemnestra after murdering her husband Agamemnon. And José Luis Gómez was almost applauded after to recite an endless number of different voices in the poem of Alberti on The Bosco.
at The end everyone came out to the stage to recreate, to read the article in which Alberti recounted the evacuation of the paintings in the Prado during the Spanish Civil War. Published in the magazine El Mono Azul on may 3, 1937, and said thus: “the Museum of the Prado had descended to the cellars to shelter from the barbarians and uneducated trimotores germans. From the inside, the low windows had been covered with metal plates and bags terreros. Outside had no crystals. More than five thousand pictures, hundreds of masterpieces among them, were there as dead scary, shoulder-to-shoulder, trembling in the corner. I jumped the eyes thinking in the halls deserted, in the vast central gallery, uninhabited. I wanted to upload, I wanted to see them, to witness the spectacle, terrible, unique, unheard-of, one of the best art galleries in the world naked, all of a sudden, its walls, many wonders had been sustained. Few men, few people in Madrid, a city almost under siege, could step into those moments, walking from one floor to another, from one room to another, that pain without a name of the empty Museum. (…) I, after the evacuation of The maids of honour, I did not want to go back more for the” Museo del Prado”.
