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| Jordi & The Grandma visit the Teatro Guimerà |
Today, The Grandma and her friends are preparing their new trip. Tomorrow, they are going to climb Mount Teide and today they have decided to relax and rest in their hotel. Jordi Santanyí and The Grandma have left the hotel to visit the Teatro Guimerá, which is dedicated to the figure of Àngel Guimerà a writer in Catalan language who was born in Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the 19th century.
Jordi and The Grandma are great fans of this magnificent writer who is considered one of the most important authors of the Renaixença (Renaissance) a great and splendorous age in the Catalan literature.
Before visiting the theatre, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Intermediate Language Practice manual (Grammar 23).
More information: Contrast
Àngel Guimerà (6 May 1845 or 6 May 1847 or 1849 – 18 July 1924) was a Catalan Nobel-nominated writer in the Catalan language. His work is known for bringing together under romantic aspects the main elements of realism. It is considered one of the principal representatives of the so-called Renaixença, at the end of the nineteenth century.
He was born in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands, to a Catalan father and a Canary islander mother. At an early age, Guimerà's family moved to Catalonia, where they settled at his father's birthplace, El Vendrell.
Guimerà wrote a number of popular plays, which were translated into other languages and performed abroad, proving instrumental in the revival of Catalan language as a literary language (Renaixença) in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By far, the most famous was his realistic drama Terra baixa translated as Martha of the Lowlands. Written in 1896, it quickly became an international sensation. The play was translated into 15 different languages. In English, the play received three Broadway productions between 1903 and 1936.
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| Àngel Guimerà |
In addition to being a popular stage play, Terra baixa was made into six films, including a silent film in the United States, entitled Martha of the Lowlands (1914) and Leni Riefenstahl's Tiefland (1954). Furthermore, it served as the source material for two operas: Eugen d'Albert's German opera Tiefland (1903) and Fernand Le Borne's La Catalane (French).
Playwright Àngel Guimerà was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he never won, due to controversy about the political significance of the gesture. He was a candidate for the Nobel Prize in 1904, to be shared with the Provençal writer Frédéric Mistral, in recognition of their contributions to literature in non-official languages. Political pressure from Spain central government having made this prize impossible, it was eventually awarded to Mistral and to the Spanish language playwright José de Echegaray.
When Guimerà died in 1924, he was offered a state funeral in Barcelona of a proportion which had never been seen before and was laid to rest on the Cemetery of Montjuïc.
In his hometown of Santa Cruz de Tenerife is a theater built in his name, Teatro Guimerá.
More information: Teatro Guimerà
Terra baixa is the story of Martha, a poor girl from Barcelona, who finds herself the young lover to Sebastià, the most important landowner in the Catalan lowlands. Sebastià must marry a woman of prominence to keep his land and inheritance. To squelch gossip of his relationship with Martha but still keep her as his lover, Sebastià marries her off to the unsuspecting Manelic, a young shepherd from the Pyrenees, and sets the newly weds up in the house attached to the town's mill. Martha finds herself torn between her old domineering lover and her new caring husband.
Another well-known work by Guimerà is the play La filla del mar (The daughter of the sea, 1900), that recounts the story of Àgata).
Her name is that of a precious stone, in sharp contrast to the contempt in which she is held. Her uncertain origins, and the fact that she had been born among Moors renders her an object of hate, branded as a heretic.
One of the few people who does not exclude her is Baltasanet, who states that When we are born, we are all Moors. Agata is perfectly conscious of the fact that she is considered a nobody and a nuisance. What evil have I done, that everyone despises me?, she asks. The discrimination she faces leads ultimately to her death.
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| Àngel Guimerà's state funeral in Barcelona, 1924 |
Agata feels attracted by the sea, which seems to be calling out to her, in the voices of her parents.
For her there is a symbolic opposition between sea and earth, the latter being all about misery and tears, whereas the sea harbours peacefulness and truth. Drowning, for her, would be a return to the amniotic fluid of the sea from which she was born. Like a sailor, she is strong, brave, and vital. At the same time she is sensitive, and when she finds in Pere Màrtir the affection she had desperately lacked, they are able to connect. She excuses his past as a ladies' man, but, overcome by jealousy, threatens him with death if he relapses.
The story of Àgata involves numerous literary allusions and archetypes, from mythological aquatic characters, to the legend of Sappho committing suicide by throwing herself from a cliff into the sea.
In his honor, the main theater of Santa Cruz de Tenerife takes its name (Teatro Guimerá), and is also the oldest of the Canary Islands. On the facade of the Museo Municipal de Bellas Artes de Santa Cruz de Tenerife are a number of marble busts representing famous tinerfeños, among them Àngel Guimerà.
In Plaça del Pi in Barcelona is a seated bronze statue of Àngel Guimerà, which is a faithful replica of the one located opposite said Teatro Guimerá of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Such Theatre is located in Avenida Ángel Guimerá, named for being the street where the draumaturgo born. There turn a similar statue one in the municipality of El Vendrell in the province of Tarragona. These three statues were made by the sculptor Josep M. Codina i Corona from a mold made by Josep Cardona i Furró. He was also named adopted son of Barcelona in 1909.
Era en lo temps en que las neus primeras
las grogas faldas dels turons baixavan;
y en amples collas, volejant lleugeras,
las aus sens pátria sobre'l mar passavan.
Àngel Guimerà
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