Sagunt a Escena opens 43rd edition with premiere of 'El Narciso en su opinión'
Sagunto's Roman Theatre opens the 43rd Sagunt a Escena festival this Saturday, 1 August, with the premiere of 'El Narciso en su opinión', an IVC production repeating Sunday in an accessible performance.
Sagunto's Roman Theatre opens the programme of the 43rd Sagunt a Escena festival with two plays based on texts from Spain's Golden Age. At 10:30pm on Saturday, 'El Narciso en su opinión' premieres, a production by the Institut Valencià de Cultura (IVC — the Valencian regional culture agency) based on a text by Guillem de Castro, written between 1612 and 1615; the show repeats on Sunday 2 August in an accessible performance designed for audiences with specific needs. Rebeca Valls directs, with an adaptation by Chema Cardeña, and the cast of more than twenty Valencian performers is led by Josep Manuel Casany, Aina Gimeno and Toni Misó. The opening play is considered a forerunner of the 'comedia de figurón', one of the dramatic subgenres that emerged during Spain's Golden Age from the 'comedia de capa y espada' (cloak-and-dagger comedy). It centres on a ridiculous, vain or self-important lead character — the 'figurón' of the title — as its main comic engine. That approach explains why the play chosen to open this year's festival is still staged four centuries later: it offers a style of character-driven humour that Spanish theatre would return to again and again in the centuries that followed. Guillem de Castro, born in Valencia in 1569 and who died in Madrid in 1631, left a mark that went well beyond Spanish theatre. His best-known play, 'Las mocedades del Cid', was adapted by French playwright Pierre Corneille into the tragedy 'Le Cid', which premiered in 1636 and catapulted the Valencian author to fame across Europe — a Golden Age writer from Valencia, little known today outside specialist circles, who directly shaped one of the founding texts of classical French theatre. The festival, organised by the regional culture department (Conselleria de Educación, Cultura y Universidades) together with the Valencia Provincial Council and Sagunto City Council, pairs the Roman Theatre's main stage each summer with its parallel Off Romà programme, designed to give visibility to smaller or emerging productions staged outside the historic venue. This edition adds the shows 'I si fem un clàssic?' and 'Anudar' to Off Romà, widening the offer beyond the two large productions that open the festival this weekend. According to aytosagunto.es and elperiodic.com, with additional background from es.wikipedia.org on Guillem de Castro.