Acceso usuarios
Mary B. Quinn
Pedro Calderón de la Barca marked the birth of Prince Felipe Próspero (1657) with the invention of a new musical-theatrical genre: zarzuela. Entitled El laurel de Apolo, the piece retells Ovid’s myth but with some unexpected additions. Though no music survives, this article reveals how Calderón created a sensorial hierarchy, privileging sound. Surprisingly, the turn toward a sonic rendering of Ovid’s myth may be the result of a painting by Peter Paul Rubens. The following essay shows how, together with its loa, sound eclipsed the visual in this zarzuela as a means to comment on circumstances beyond the stage.
