Theatre
Wedding Dress
Vestido de noiva
Nelson Rodrigues · 1943
Synopsis
Alaíde, a young woman from Rio's well-to-do middle class, has just been knocked down by a car and lies dying on an operating table. The play unfolds in her mind, on three planes: reality, memory and hallucination. There she meets Madame Clessi, an elegant courtesan murdered at the beginning of the century, whose private diary she has read and who urges her to relive her memories. Gradually the bitter triangle that binds her to her husband, Pedro, and her sister, Lúcia, is pieced together.
Context
The play premiered on 28 December 1943 at the Municipal Theatre of Rio, performed by the Comediantes company, in a staging by the Pole Zbigniew Ziembinski and with sets by Tomás Santa Rosa, after seven months of rehearsals according to the Latin American Theatre Review. Its multi-level set and its play of lights broke with a stage accustomed to imported comedies. The audience, at first baffled, applauded it at the last act, and the critics spoke of a masterpiece according to Vermelho. It is regarded as the starting point of modern theatre in Brazil.
Who it is for
A short play, but whose three registers follow one another without warning; translated into English in 2019, it has no French edition in the BnF catalogue.
Prizes and reception
Hailed from its first production as a turning point in the history of Brazilian theatre, and the work that revealed its author to the literary public.
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