Serafín Álvarez Quintero (March 26, 1871 – April 12, 1938) and Joaquín Álvarez Quintero (January 20, 1873 – June 14, 1944) were
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...
dramatist
A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes plays.
Etymology
The word "play" is from Middle English pleye, from Old English plæġ, pleġa, plæġa ("play, exercise; sport, game; drama, applause"). The word "wright" is an archaic English ...
s.
Biography
Quintero brothers, photograph by ">Kaulak
Born in
Utrera
Utrera () is a municipality in south-west Spain. It is in the province of Seville, in the autonomous community of Andalusia. As of 2018 it has a population of 52,617.
The town is of great historical interest. It was occupied by Muslims in the 8 ...
,
Seville Province
The Province of Seville ( es, Sevilla) is a province of southern Spain, in the western part of the autonomous community of Andalusia. It is bordered by the provinces of Málaga, Cádiz in the south, Huelva in the west, Badajoz in the north and C ...
in 1871 and 1873, they settled in
Seville
Seville (; es, Sevilla, ) is the capital and largest city of the Spanish autonomous community of Andalusia and the province of Seville. It is situated on the lower reaches of the River Guadalquivir, in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula ...
and worked as treasury employees, while collaborating on various publications such as , they gradually began their dedication to the theater. Their debut as authors took place in 1888 with at the Cervantes Theater in Seville. Their first stage piece, , was written in 1889. Other works include (1892), (1894), (1895), (1897), and (1898), (1900), and (1907), (1909), and (1915). Both brothers were members of the
Royal Spanish Academy
The Royal Spanish Academy ( es, Real Academia Española, generally abbreviated as RAE) is Spain's official royal institution with a mission to ensure the stability of the Spanish language. It is based in Madrid, Spain, and is affiliated with ...
.
Their first resounding success was in 1897 with , this success was followed by many others, consisting of (1901), (1906), (1912), (1912), (1908), and much later, (1930). They were named the favorite brothers of Utrera and Seville. Their works were translated into several languages, and they performed in the most remote areas of the spanish speaking world, such as in the
Teatro Colón
The Teatro Colón (Spanish: ''Columbus Theatre'') is the main opera house in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It is considered one of the ten best opera houses in the world by National Geographic. According to a survey carried out by the acousti ...
in
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...
, by the Guerrero-Mendoza company that carried several of their works when the theater was built, due to this the brothers enjoyed innumerable tributes, making their works well-known into the 1920s.
Both were imprisoned at the beginning of the Civil War in
El Escorial
El Escorial, or the Royal Site of San Lorenzo de El Escorial ( es, Monasterio y Sitio de El Escorial en Madrid), or Monasterio del Escorial (), is a historical residence of the King of Spain located in the town of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, u ...
. Serafín would die of natural causes in 1938, and
Melchor Rodríguez García
Melchor Rodríguez García (30 May 1893 —14 February 1972), also known by his nickname of ''The Red Angel'' (Spanish: ''El Ángel Rojo''), was a Spanish politician, trade unionist, and notable anarcho-syndicalist, who served as the head of ...
had to intercede to allow Serafin's sister to bring a crucifix to his coffin, as had Serafín wished, but had been given refusal by militiamen at the mortuary house. Joaquín would die in 1944, and the remains of both rest in the
San Justo Cemetery in Madrid.
They were also famous for having tried to transcribe
Andalusian dialect
The Andalusian dialects of Spanish ( es, andaluz, , ) are spoken in Andalusia, Ceuta, Melilla, and Gibraltar. They include perhaps the most distinct of the southern variants of peninsular Spanish, differing in many respects from northern varietie ...
s to written form.
Work
Although they did not only write comedies (such as , etc...), skits (such as , 1905),
zarzuela
() is a Spanish lyric-dramatic genre that alternates between spoken and sung scenes, the latter incorporating operatic and popular songs, as well as dance. The etymology of the name is uncertain, but some propose it may derive from the name of ...
operas (such as , 1903) and comic pieces, but also dramas (such as , 1912, , 1924), it was in these genres that they are best remembered because of their comic talent. In total they wrote nearly two hundred titles, some of them awarded, such as , which received the Royal Academy Award for Best Comedy of the Year. Their last joint work was , a zarzuela by José Padilla.
Many of their pieces are of a
costumbrismo
''Costumbrismo'' (sometimes anglicized as costumbrism, with the adjectival form costumbrist) is the literary or pictorial interpretation of local everyday life, mannerisms, and customs, primarily in the Hispanic scene, and particularly in the 19t ...
nature, describing what it's like being from their native
Andalusia
Andalusia (, ; es, Andalucía ) is the southernmost Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community in Peninsular Spain. It is the most populous and the second-largest autonomous community in the country. It is officially recognised as a ...
n lands, but leaving aside the gloomy and miserable vision of social ills. According to Francisco Ruiz Ramón in (, 1995), "the basic assumptions of this theater are those of a naive naturalistic realism". In the thirties their art was used in the cinema, creating several scripts for the films of the mythical Estrellita Castro. They did not contribute any substantial technical or structural novelty, but they refined Andalusianism in the same way that
Carlos Arniches
Carlos Arniches Barreda (11 October 1866 – 16 April 1943)"Arniches (y Barrera), Carlos" in ''The New Encyclopædia Britannica''. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 15th edn., 1992, Vol. 1, p. 577. was a Spanish playwright, born in Al ...
did. In Madrid, However, they never went further indepth with their social ideas, which stops at tenderness and melodramatics. In short, they are bourgeois comedies that offer an idealized and friendly vision of Andalusia that does not worry the average viewer; the joy of living silences any hint of dramatic conflict. It was this joie de vivre that saved the theater of the Quintero brothers from critics such as
Ramón Pérez de Ayala
Ramón Pérez de Ayala y Fernández del Portal (9 August 1880, in Oviedo – 5 August 1962, in Madrid) was a Spanish writer. He was the Spanish ambassador to England in London (1931-1936) and voluntarily exiled himself to Argentina via Fr ...
,
José Martínez Ruiz
José Augusto Trinidad Martínez Ruiz, better known by his pseudonym Azorín (; June 8, 1873 – March 2, 1967), was a Spanish novelist, essayist and literary critic. As a political radical in the 1890s, he moved steadily to the right. In liter ...
and
Luis Cernuda
Luis Cernuda Bidón (September 21, 1902 – November 5, 1963) was a Spanish poet, a member of the Generation of '27. During the Spanish Civil War, in early 1938, he went to the UK to deliver some lectures and this became the start of an exile t ...
.
Their Complete Works were published in Madrid: , 1918-1947, in forty-two volumes.
Bibliography
* Javier Huerta, Emilio Peral, Héctor Urzaiz, ''Teatro español de la A a la Z''. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 2005.
External links
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{{Authority control
People from Utrera
19th-century Spanish writers
19th-century male writers
20th-century Spanish writers
20th-century Spanish male writers
Members of the Royal Spanish Academy