Blood Wedding

BBC Radio Play, aired during August 1986

Overall rating: 5 hands

Rickmaniac rating: 5 hands

Federico Garcia Lorca (June 5, 1898 - August 18, 1936), is one of the most influential writers in Spanish literature. His intensely passionate style created breathtaking poetry and drama, and is characterized by

• dramatic use of lyrical vocabulary
• very musical, rhythmic language
• highly symbolic imagery which was heavily influenced by Surrealism and the French Symbolists.

Blood Wedding, written in 1933, is the first of a trilogy of plays (with Yerma, 1934, and The House Of Bernarda Alba, 1936 -- see Suggested Viewing*, below), that are characterized by the influence of classical Greek tragedy and relentless tension. These three plays are intensely demanding of their actors and of the audience.

Erroneously categorized as a "folk play", Blood Wedding is universal: It is a classic play in its theme, scope, and through most of its structure. Many regard Blood Wedding to foreshadow the Spanish Civil War (which started 3 years after the play was written) and its carnage. Blood Wedding has influenced many writers, for instance, Gabriel Garcia Marquez in his Chronicle Of A Death Foretold (1985).

This BBC Radio production, starring Anna Massey, Juliet Stevenson, and Alan Rickman, first aired in 1986, on the 50th anniversary of Garcia Lorcas’s murder during the Spanish Civil War. The wonderful translation by James Graham Lujan and Richard L. O’Connell captures the emotion, and, together with the radio adaptation by Walter Acosta, make this an extraordinary audio. Even the wedding song was based on a melody by Garcia Lorca, as he originally intended. This superb production was clearly a labor of love. It is not light, easy listening; it is, however, dazzling and entrancing.

Emotions in the play run at fever-pitch; the passion of Leonardo and the bride made me think of the words "unforgiving love" to describe it. It is of scorch-earth intensity. The actors convey all the sorrow and the drama without overplaying. Alan Rickman was perfectly cast as the man whose voice (after all, this is a radio adaptation) would make a bride abandon her husband during the wedding reception.

Rickmaniacs are warned that Mr. Rickman plays Leonardo, a key character who is the catalyst for the tragedy, but all the principal actors have evenly distributed parts as far as air time goes. However, listening to him say

"To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves . . . "

Suggested Reading:

Garcia Lorca’s works are widely available in print, both in the original Spanish and in translation.

If you are interested in reading about Federico Garcia Lorca, I recommend two excellent books,

• Ian Gibons’s Federico Garcia Lorca, A Life, which contains valuable information on the play's historical context (BW was inspired by a real-life crime) and the influence of foreign writers, such as J. M. Synge, on F. G. L. (pp. 335-341)
• Leslie Stainton’s Lorca, A Dream Of Life, which explains many of the symbols (pp. 297-302).

*BBC TV produced The House Of Bernarda Alba several years ago starring Glenda Jackson and Helena Bonham-Carter. I have been told that there is a Spanish film version of Yerma, but have been unable to locate this video.

On video, there is a flamenco version of Blood Wedding (1981), directed by Carlos Saura, starring and coreographed by Antonio Gades.

For an example of a film that utilizes the Surrealist imagery of the period, see Un Chien Andalou (1929), by Luis Bunuel in collaboration with Salvador Dali (both were friends of F.G.L.). Additionally, many of Salvador Dali's art works of the late 1920's - 1930's show this type of imagery.