Theatre
Blood Wedding
Bodas de sangre
Federico García Lorca · 1933
Synopsis
In the Andalusian countryside, a mother who has lost her husband and a son, killed by men of the Félix family, marries off her last son. She learns that the bride was once involved with Leonardo, a Félix, since married to a cousin of the young woman and who still prowls at night beneath her window. On the morning of the wedding, Leonardo comes to see her again. During the feast, the bride disappears: she has run away with him, on horseback. The groom sets off in pursuit, and the mother sends the whole wedding party out into the night.
Context
Premiered on 8 March 1933 at the Beatriz theatre in Madrid, the play was revived the same year in Buenos Aires by Lola Membrives's company, and the author made the journey to direct it. It is inspired, according to several sources, by a news item that occurred in the province of Almería. The tragedy mixes verse and prose; only Leonardo bears a name, the others are the Mother, the Bride, the Bridegroom. In the last act appear the Moon, in the guise of a young woodcutter with a white face, and Death, as a beggar woman. It is grouped, with Yerma and La casa de Bernarda Alba, among the author's rural tragedies.
Who it is for
A short play, in three acts, that moves from prose to verse; knives, horses and the moon recur in it like signs.
Prizes and reception
Brought to the screen as early as 1938 in Argentina and adapted as an opera; Antonio Gades made it into a ballet, which Carlos Saura filmed in 1981.