La Gitanilla y The Bohemian Girl: La trayectoria musical de un tema cervantino.

Abstract

The article collects, as a central theme, the projection that the short novel La Gitanilla de Cervantes had in a nineteenth century opera: The Bohemian Girl, by the Irish composer Michael William Balfe, with a libretto by Alfred Bunn. It begins with a general vision of what is known as the romantic dream, that is, how Spain was seen in the 19th century outside our borders, with examples taken from literature. Then we approach the city of Seville as a meeting point for many operas and as a framework for the creation of some myths of universal culture. After focusing on the Cervantes novel as a source of inspiration for Balfe's opera, we approach a presentation of this work from the perspective of its initial success, its later forgetting and the current attempts at recovery. We continue with a comparison between the protagonists of the two works (Preciosa and Arline). Some final thoughts close this work.