| |
Origins
The festivity of Asunción
de María
 The primitive Christian church began to
emphasize determined dates of the liturgical calendar
devoting them to commemorate passages of the life of
Christ.
Many of these celebrations were
made extensive to the martyrs and to the Saints. María
started to occupy a preeminent place to the point that,
in parallel to Christ, were developed several festivitys
related to her life. One of these was commemorating the
Birth of María to the Skies, that is to say, the entry
in the Glory after her death, in spite the perplexity
that this last would cause amongst the Christians (for
those which the lack of sin presupposes the nonexistence
of the death).
Test of this is the series of
names that adopted the festivity: Slept, Pause, Rest,
Migration, Deposition, Birth to the Heaven, etc. It will
be between the century VII and VIII that the name Assumpcio
de la Maredeu (Asución of the Mother of God) is
adopted, and it is fixed the celebration to the day 15 of
August.
Narration of la Asunción
Very soon it was introduced the
usage of complementing the liturgy of these festivitys
(Eucharist), with allusive ceremonies to the life of the
Saint. Emerge thus the tropi, or small dialogues
that are intercalate in the middle of the oficios
or the ceremonial processions, as the slept, that
are the precedent of the medieval religious theatre.
Nevertheless, as neither the
gospels, nor other texts of the New Testament, neither
the tradition were indicating the manner in which was
produced the death and assumption of María, the
preoccupation by knowing this and other problems gave
cause for a series of texts, written to the style
"historical" and purportedly work of the "apostolic
tradition", that we know under the Evangelios
Apócrifos.
In this direction, all the
researchers of La Festa accept as source direct of
inspiration the Sanctorum Legend or Golden Legend,
drafted for Voragine of Jacobo before 1270, and
very early translated to the Catalan, that is a synthesis
of the principal Evangelios Apócrifos with
character asuncionista: Book of the Rest, Liber
Dorimitione Sactae Deiparae o pseudo Juan Evangelista;
Transitus Beata Mariae del s-Meliton de Sardes Transitus
W, Histira Euthimicaca, Transitus Beata Mariae del
s-José de Arimatea, etc.
The cult asuncionista in the
Corona de Aragón
The Assumption was the great
festivity mariana in the Visigode and Mozarabic liturgy
between the centuries IX and XI, and throughout the
reconquest was reaching identical range in the galeroman.
From S. XII, as indicates Aureli
Argemí, the cult to the assumption overflow the
enclosure of the shrines to be converted into popular
devotion, very especially in the territories of the Corona
de Aragon. Contributed to this a series of facts: the
construction of shrines under the dedication of the
Counts of Barcelona, and very especially of the king
Alfonso I; the multiplication of the liturgical books;
the constant reference to the topic on the part of the
most important personages of the era: Infante Don Juan
Manuel, San Vicente Ferrer, Eiximenis, Sor Isabel
deVillena, etc.
Spanish Dramas Asuncionistas
As the sole drama asuncionista, La
Festa is a direct consequence of this environment
that reigned not only in Aragon (whose examples more
notorious are those of Santa María de Estany, el Drama
Asuncionista de Badalona, the Celebrations of
Mallorca, Misterio de la Catedral de Valencia, the
representations of Evened, Tortosa and Castellón); but
also in Castille (the Coronation of Maria, that are
represented in Fernando of Antequera, the Assumption that
for the Cathedral of Toledo wrote the Arcipreste of
Talavera, el Auto of the Assumption of the Corpus of
Toledo, the three autos asuncionistas of the Codice of
autos viejos, all preserved in the Biblioteca Nacional).
Origins
With respect to the date of
creation of the drama ilicitano exist two ideas. The most
ancient and fabulous, figures its origin in the S. XIII,
it was subscribed by first time by Cristobal Sanz, author
of a history of the city, at the beginning of the S.
XVII, who, after confessing that he had not been able to
prove it, it considers ... the first inhabitants of
the Infante Don Juan Manuel (year 1276) had cellebrated
it. He also adds other of greater antiquity at the
conquest of the city by the king Jaime I (1265) ...
though some mean that because [we] have gained to the
Moors this villa such day of the Assumption, the
inhabitants started to make it...
In 1717 José Antón, General
Attorney of the Marquisate of Elche, collected this last
line, but added a miraculous aspect: the arrival to a
beach to the term of Elche of a mysterious ark in May of
1266, that was containing the image of the Virgin of the
Assumption and the Consueta, or book that it contains the letter and
in occasions the music of the representation.
This line was maintained in part
mercy of a possible mistake of the composer Oscar Esplá,
who asserted had been shown in 1224 a letter of 1266 in
which was authorized the representation and that was
guarded in the Archivo Municipal of Elche (despite it has
been never seen neither so even cited). The transcendency
of labor carried out by Esplá and his importance as
composer, rejuvenated in the environments less
illustrated the theory of its origin in the S. XIII.
Nevertheless, since the end of
the century XIX, when the first historians arrived to
Elche and studyed the representation, the date of its
accomplishment starts to be located at the end of the S.
XIV, and thereinafter in the XV. At present, the totality
of scholars of La Festa, from its multiple points
of view: literary, theatrical, musical, ligüistic,
iconographic, etc. agreed to date it in second half of
the S. XV, without mphasizing the precedents existence in
the own city.
|
| |
Scene
The Heaven
The great linen located to the
height of the ring of the dome fulfils the double
function of representing the sky and to conceal the
mechanisms that permit the ascent and decrease of the air
appliances. Its antiquity is possibly soared one way or
another to the same origin of the current representation,
supposed that already in 1530, the document more ancient
than in the present time is known on the representation
already seems to indicate the air movements presence.
The linen, furthermore separates
the celestial actions from the earthly, and possesses a
peep-hole designated door to the heaven that is
opened and closed in three occasions to give place to the
air appliances.
The Grenade
Receive this name the appliance
intended to transport the Angel with the palm
toMaría to indicate her the transit.
In its current structure, the
device will correspond to the second half of the S.XVI,
and by its form as well as by the same name recalls
mechanisms of the era, used so much in Spain: boxes,
worlds, balls...
Until a little while ago was
thought that the grenade term was of a great
modernity, product of having altered the traditional
color (blue) for the current (red), being considered the
cloud term as more ancient and correct. Modern
investigations have centered the hypothesis of the
appearance of the name in the S.XVI, possibly because of
the transformation of an steamier appliance, and built
possibly with cotton, paper, fabrics in its external
features; in favour the current most compact and strong.
The Araceli
The Araceli enters scene in two
occasions, an in each session. In the first decrease the
angels to carry the soul of María to the heaven, and to
order to the apostles that organize a procession and bury
her body. In the second, in the great final scene, in the
one which the angel with the soul is substituted by the
image of Maria, she is crowned to half of her ascension
to the Heaven by the Santísima Trinidad.
The araceli is not an appliance
exclusively ilicitano it recalls plastic compositions of
the end of the S. XV and above all beginning of the XVI.
The Corridor
Receive this name the great
corridor that, traveling in all its extension the
building, puts on communication the cadafal with
the principal door of the shrine. Its importance is large
so much from the scene as symbolic point of view. Respect
to the first, it is the only physical element that
permits that all the church is converted into a dramatic
action framework; an second the walkway is the road that
permit communicate what is earthly with what is divine,
it is the symbolic representation of the spiritual road
that accomplish all the personages.
Maria also accomplishes its
pilgrination for the Passion of Jesus, it means, that she
carries out the ideal of the christianity, to experience
the Passion of Jesus.
The Cadafal
With this name is designated the
platform on the one which takes place a great part of the
representation. It is located in the central section of
the cruise, though being introduced in part in the choir
in order to make coincide the spulcher with the shaft of
the Door of the Heaven
It is totally coverd of wood to
conceal to the public the hollow that it remains below,
where they change statues by actors, etc.
The term cadafal appears
already in the first news on representations in the
interior of the shrines with an invariable meaning: dais
or platform where it takes place the dramatic action.
In Elche, the cadafal is in
words of Quirante Santacruz "the area of María.
Contain the places that they are hers exclusively, her
house and her sepulcher. In him, the Virgin experiences
all the process of sacralization and glorification that
contains the work, it is theonly one point where
celestial personages and lands live together".
|
| |
Performances
Normal
- The 14 is the "La Vespra", this first
session represents the death of María,
surrounded by the apostles.
- The day 15 "La Festa", the argument of
which is the burial, assumption and coronation of
the Virgin.
- The same day, at 10 o'clock, the
"Misteri" takes the street: the
procession of the "soterrar"
(to bury) of María, with songs of
"La Festa" and participation of
the actors.
Before, there has been a whole series of actions that
approximate us to these days of August and to the world
of "La Festa".
- The 6th of August, in the Room
of the Council, takes place "la
prova de veus", in order to select
those which will sing "El
Misteri", fact by the council to
prove the municipal adscription and not
ecclesiastic of "La Festa"
ilicitana.
- The 10th of august , at six
o'clock of the afternoon, in the
basilica, is accomplished "la prova
de l'àngel", by means of which are
chosen the resistant infants to the
dizziness and, therefore, able to descend
from the dome, in the interior of the air
appliances.
Extraordinary
- The days 11th, 12th and 13rd
take place the so called "Ensayos
generales", that are extraordinary
representations.
and, thus, each year,
from
centuries..
|