"Tonadillas" and "diplomacia" in Enlightenment Madrid

The word 'diplomacy' and its Spanish cognate diplomacia have come to refer to the unstable para- and extra-textual negotiations between textually invested powers. In this article I suggest that very similar negotiations can be traced through the long history of Spanish comic musical theatr...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Early music 2012-08, Vol.40 (3), p.421-440
Main Author: Le Guin, Elisabeth
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Academia
Audiences
Comic theater
Definitions
Dictionaries
Diplomacy
Music
MUSIC AND DIPLOMACY
Musical forms
Musical register
Musicology
Singing
Spanish language
Theater
Traditional dance
Vocal music
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Summary:The word 'diplomacy' and its Spanish cognate diplomacia have come to refer to the unstable para- and extra-textual negotiations between textually invested powers. In this article I suggest that very similar negotiations can be traced through the long history of Spanish comic musical theatre, which existed in a state of perpetual tension with textual authority. My case study comes from the late end of that history: La Avellanera y dos franceses ('The Almond-seller and Two Frenchmen'), a 1767 tonadilla by Pablo Esteve. The piece presents a species of everyday, street-level 'international relations': the Almond-seller, an Andalusian woman, represents a particularly atavistic sort of proto-nationalism, while the pseudo-sophisticated Frenchmen represent a major source of Spanish cultural anxiety in the period. By using information about performance practices in the Madrid public theatres, and about the specific performers themselves, I go beyond the rudimentary and reductive information extant in the score to suggest some of the much more ambiguous negotiations that could have been enacted on the stage of the Coliseo de la Cruz in real time. This is not to say that tonadillas were ever 'diplomatic' in any political sense. Rather, they partake in the subversive yet powerless nature of all comic theatre and song: always acknowledging that vested power cannot be trusted, yet never able to change that fact.
ISSN:0306-1078
1741-7260
DOI:10.1093/em/cas083