Word: andalusian
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...flamenco instrument into the hallowed precincts of the concert hall. "That stupid young fellow is making useless efforts to change the guitar -- with its mysterious, Dionysiac nature -- into an Apollonian instrument," wrote one skeptic after Segovia's 1910 debut in Madrid. "The guitar responds to the passionate exaltation of Andalusian folklore, but not to the precision, order and structure of classical music...
...WHERE Shakespeare's characters in Romeo and Juliet are clearly universal, local Andalusian flavor pervades those of Blood Wedding and much of the Spanish specificity and poetry of Garcia Lorca's vision are lost on an American audience watching an English translation...
Some of the fault lies with the American audience itself, which is likely to find the Andalusian character of the play foreign and strange. As a result, certain lines in this tragedy that would evoke sympathy or pathos in a Spanish audience evoke bewilderment, disgust, or even laughter in an American audience...
Still, Cohn has changed Blood Wedding in many fundamental way. Garcia Lorca's primal story and themes remain, but his poetry and Andalusian spirit are either lost on the audience or are simply lost. The actors and production crew bring technical polish to the production, but the translation and Cohn's other changes tend to dilute their efforts to provide Blood Wedding with the intensity it deserves...
Flamenco, which includes the singing and guitar music as well as the dance of Andalusian Gypsies, has a language all its own, so simple that it seems to bypass the brain and speak directly to the heart. In the words of the playwright Federico Garcia Lorca, it "knows death, knows blood, knows love." And that awful but powerful knowledge is what this revue seeks to convey. As its title indicates, it presents the real, raw stuff, without nightclub flourish or Jose Greco's acrobatic flamboyance...