Next Friday, 20th of October of 2023, Kenneth Brown (University of Calgary) will be giving a lecture entitled “El mundo judío y criptojudío de Fernando de Rojas y de su obra La Celestina” at the Museo La Celestina in La Puebla de Montalbán (Spain).
This event is organised by the local journal Crónicas and the cultural association Las Cumbres de Montalbán, who are responsible for organising the academic roundtables and papers within the context the annual Festival Celestina, as well.
La Puebla de Montalbán seems to be progressively increasing the amount of events of celestinesque interest that take place in the Museo La Celestina, so that I would keep an eye on its future activities. It looks like as if the local institutions were actively trying to turn La Puebla de Montalbán into a relevant spot for celestinesque scholars and other people interested in Celestina. Let’s hope I am not wrong!
Just dropping a quick post to announce that the official programme of the XXV Festival Celestina is already on-line. In 2023, the festival will take place from the 18th to the 27th of August in La Puebla de Montalbán and, as usual, there will be literal underground theatre (it is staged underground, in old cellars), music, dance and many other related activities like a street market and an outdoor cinema. There will also be acting and acrobatics courses for youths.
Of particular interest for the followers of this blog might be the roundtable about Celestina that will take place on the 22th of August 2023, at the Museo La Celestina (topic to be disclosed!). And, for a change, this will be the first time I will be able to attend. Hope to see you there!
An event of celestinesque interest is taking place in Lorient (France), at the Université Bretagne Sud, on the 14th of April 2023.
Organised by François Xavier Guerry (Université Bretagne Sud), it will deal with two of the most discussed topics within the celestinesque scholarship of the last decade: the iconography of Celestina and contemporary interpretations of Celestina.
With regard to the first subject, Guillermo Juberías Gracia (Université Bretagne Sud) will be presenting on «Alcahuetería en la plástica contemporánea, de Goya a Braun-Vega : usos y variaciones de un asunto español», followed by the paper «Celestina selon Picasso : naissance d’une icône moderne» by Timo Kehren (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz) and Virginie Dumanoir (Université Rennes 2), who will be talking about «La Célestine en couverture : éditions contemporaines».
The second topic will be addressed by Jéromine François (Université de Namur, NaLTT), who will read her paper «Celestina en serie: propuesta de tipología para la narrativa actual»; Christine Orobitg (Université Aix-Marseille), with her paper «Melibea à la lumière des féminismes contemporains : une réflexion autour des notions d’objet et de sujet, de la volonté et du consentement»; Thomas Faye (Sorbonne Université), who will talk about «La Célestine et la bande dessinée : entre décentrement et annexion, une héroïne difficile à mettre en case ? », and Enrique Fernández (University of Manitoba), with a paper on «La presencia escénica y la caracterización de famosas actrices que interpretaron el personaje de Celestina».
The full programme can be downloaded by clicking on the poster above or from the official website of the Université Bretagne Sud. There is no information on who can attend the event or if the event will be streamed on-line, but if you are in France it might be worth asking the organiser.
A few fortunate people in Zaragoza were able to buy tickets for today’s performance of Celestina: Un musical joven, which is sold out.
I do not know what kind of musical this new version is, if it is remotely linked to Brad Bond’s Celestina: A Tragic Musical Comedy or not. But, according to the descriptions I have been able to find on the internet, it is a musical by young actors conceived to make Celestina attractive for a young audience.
If it does, I do neither know, because I have not been able but to watch the trailer at the corresponding Instagram account and it does not give much information on the show. However, I would be very glad to hear more on this project.
The script and adaptation is due to Jesús Gacías, a mathematician, componist and actor himself, in collaboration with Guillermo Alcalde for the music. Choreography by Alicia Soravilla. The cast has been chosen among young actors of the city of Zaragoza (open casting at the end of 2019) and they have been working on this project since then. The musical was first staged on the 29th and 30th of June 2022 and this is the second time it is performed in Zaragoza after its initial success.
By the way, it might be interesting to remember that, besides Brad Bond’s and this new musical version, there is one less Broadway, more traditional sung version fo Celestina by Molto Vivace, which was also mentioned in this post of 2019 and of which you can see a summary here.
The 24th Festival Celestina will be taking place between the 24th and the 28th of August 2022 in La Puebla de Montalbán (Toledo). This is the first in-person edition of the festival since the COVID19 lockdown, so that everybody is looking forward to it more than ever. This is particularly noticeable in the brand new website of the festival, which is a significant improvement with regard to the old web page. The programme can be downloaded in PDF format here.
José Juan Morcillo Pérez (IES Andrés de Vandelvira, Albacete) will be giving the usual lecture at the Museo Celestina on Friday, 26th of August 2022, at 20:00. The topic is “Fernando de Rojas, autor de la novela jurídica Lazarillo de Tormes“, in which I suppose that the speaker will be defending his thesis that Fernando de Rojas is the author of Lázaro de Tormes.
There will also be an educational event on Thursday, 25th of August 2022, at 20:00 at the Museo Celestina. In it, Ignacio Arcos Gil (IES María Pacheco, Toledo) will use the radio adaptation of Celestina of the Cadena Ser radio programme Un libro, una hora to introduce the audience to key aspects of the work.
The traditional underground theatre plays will also return: En busca de Calisto y Melibea (for children), Escuela de Celestinas (age 16+), ¡Redención para Pármeno! (Reflexiones sin cabeza) (age 12+), Antinomia (general audience), Moldes que escupen fuego (En la imprenta de Juan de Lucena) (general audience), Las hermanas Celestinas (general audience), Melibea a las nueve. Un viaje de cuento (for children) and La Rueda (general audience). Tickets for the underground plays can be bought at the official website of the festival.
Outside, at the Plaza Mayor, the theatre play Francisco Hernández de La Puebla (Periplo y testamento) is programmed for the first day of the festival. The monologue El Lazarillo de Tormes by Rafael Álvarez “El Brujo” will be taking place on Friday, 26th of August 2022, at 22:00. The next day, at the same time, the play La grande enfermedad (Peste y milagro en Montalbán) will be staged. On the final day, on Sunday, the play will be La Celestina by Albacity Corporation.
As usual, during the festival there will be a medieval fair and the Jornada de la Tapa taking place. And, as usual, I will not be able to attend. Traditions do not get lost.