Last database update of 2019

The year 2019 is coming to an end and I have managed to update the bibliographic database Bibliografía celestinesca on time, before 2020 starts, with the latest articles published on the topic of Celestina. That means almost 50 entries for 2019! Celestinesque scholarship is far from being dead.

My new year’s resolution regarding the database is completing the records until 2000, that means, entering the missing entries from Snow’s An Annotated Bibliography of World Interest (1930-1985) and Celestinesca’s bibliographic supplements. That’s more than one thousand entries! But, after having entered more than 2350 records, that’s nothing.

This new year 2020, I will also try to finally coordinate the bibliographic database and the bibliographic supplements of Celestinesca: there are currently about 100 records (only!) in the database that are not in the printed version. This tends to change over the year, but it seems doable.

For a new year 2020 full of interesting celestinesque scholarship! (But not too full or I will not be able to keep to my new year resolutions).

Paper on Celestina at the I Congreso internacional sobre libro medieval y moderno

The I Congreso Internacional sobre libro medieval y moderno is taking place in Zaragoza from the 10th to the 12th of September 2014. According to the official programme of the event, at 10:55 on Friday the 12th, the independent researcher  Remedios Prieto de la Iglesia will be giving a paper on a celestinesque topic, with the title “Constricciones y libertades ortográficas de los impresores en cuatro ediciones tempranas de La Celestina: Toledo 1500, Burgos 1499-1502 (?), Zaragoza 1507 y Valencia 1514″.

Work in progress: Bibliographical database on Celestina

It has been long since my last post and, since summer is a time for personal projects, I would like to comment on a current ongoing project of great interest for “celestinistas”: a searchable on-line database of celestinesque bibliography.

Database frontpage.
Database frontpage.

Unlike the bibliographies of Lilian von der Walde Moheno1and A. Robert Lauer2, HTML-based and conceived as a traditional list of recommended readings, this new project is inspired by on-line library catalogues and aims to serve as an useful research tool, as well as as a digital alternative to and a backup of Joseph T. Snow’s impressive bibliography on the topic3 and Celestinesca‘s “suplementos bibliográficos”. Therefore, on its current stage, the purpose of this project is to create a database record for each bibliographical item in both, Snow’s and Celestinesca‘s bibliographies. This proves a tedious and long work, as there are more than two thousand and only slightly more than ten per cent have been introduced in the database by now, but the amount of records keeps growing and it is very likely that the database will be complete by 2015.

Records 1-5 (from 325) in table view.
Records 1-5 (from 325) in table view.
Records 1-8 (from 325) in list view.
Records 1-8 (from 325) in list view.

After some failed attempts at self-programming of the frontend and much fighting with the otherwise very useful database interface builder Xataface, it was decided to use the web-based customisable bibliographical database RefBase, which covered most of the needs of the project. Not only does it offer an excellent, almost fully customisable search tool, and several results views, but it does also offer the possibility to save and export bibliographical records directly to your computer or bibliographical software. Moreover, it allows users to keep track of the latest bibliographical entries thank to its RSS feed, and to access directly on-line items.

Simple search form.
Simple search form.

At present, this is a one-person project but should you be interested in participating or knowing the public URL, please contact me.


1Walde Moheno, Lilian von der (website), “Bibliografía: La Celestina” <http://www.waldemoheno.net/Medioevo/Cel.html> (25/07/2014).

2Lauer, A. Robert (website), “Bibliografía celestinesca” <http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/L/A-Robert.R.Lauer-1/BibCelestina.html> (25/07/2014).

3Snow, Joseph T. (1985), “Celestina” by Fernando de Rojas: An Annotated Bibliography of World Interest 1930-1985, (Madison: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies).

Publication: Monograph on Celestina and its relation to the devotio moderna by Martha García

García, Martha (2013), Dialogismo teológico: Devotio moderna, Celestina & Quijote, Biblioteca Cátedra Miguel de Cervantes 27 (Vigo: Editorial Academia del Hispanismo).

ISBN: 978-84-15175-71-1

Link to the table of contents

In Dialogismo teológico: Devotio moderna, Celestina & Quijote Martha García (University of Central Florida) analyses how Celestina and El Quijote maintain a dialogue with the religious context of their time and, more specifically, with the devotio moderna. She highlights the theological questions and implications that can be found in both masterpieces, and contributes new perspectives on the religious background of both texts.

Opera and Celestina: On-line resources

There is nothing new I can add to Snow’s bibliographical appendix of Celestina‘s operas in the twentieth century1, however, as an adept net-surfer I have been able to locate several related on-line resources of interest for celestinistas and music lovers.

For example, digitised versions of the full Castilian libretto of Felipe Pedrell’s La Celestina. Tragicomedia lírica de Calisto y Melibea2 and its reduction for voice and piano, with the French and the Italian translations of the libretto3, can be found at the Biblioteca Digital Hispánica (libretto and voice-piano score), the Memòria Digital de Catalunya (voice-piano score), and Archive.org (libretto). The libretto of Joaquín Nin-Culmell’s La Celestina is also available as part of the programme of the 2008 world premiere at the Teatro de la Zarzuela (Madrid).

Finding recordings of operas based on Celestina proves far more difficult. I know positively that the fifth scene of Pedrell’s Celestina was recorded during the 1999 world premiere at L’Auditori de Barcelona and released in 2001 in the collection “Colección Autor” of Tritó Edicions4. Apparently, there is a video recording of Jerome Rosen’s Calisto and Melibea: A Comedy of Love, Seduction, and Death 1979 premiere at the University of California in Davis, kept in the Berkeley Library, and there are several pictures of Maurice Ohana’s La Célestine: tragi-comédie lyrique en un prologue et onze tableaux 1988 premiere at the Palais Garnier (Paris) in Gallica. By contrast, I could find several videos of Nin-Culmell’s La Celestina performance at the Teatro de la Zarzuela:

 

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These are the on-line resources for the study of the operas based on Celestina I could find so far. However, should something be missing, please contact me.


1Snow, Joseph T. (2007), “Richard Strauss, Stefan Zweig, Joseph Gregor and the Story of the Celestina Opera that Almost was, with a Bibliographical Appendix of Celestina Operas in the Twentieth Century”, Celestinesca 31, pp. 133-164. Available on-line.

2Pedrell, Felipe (1903), La Celestina. Tragicomedia lírica de Calisto y Melibea (Barcelona: Tipolitografía de Salvat).

3Pedrell, Felipe; Curzon, Henri de (trad.), and Bignotti, Angelo (trad.), (1903), La Celestina. Tragicomedia lírica de Calisto y Melibea (Barcelona, Bilbao and Madrid: Casa Dotesio).

4Pedrell, Felipe (2001), Excelsior. La Celestina, Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya (Barcelona: Tritó Edicions).

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