La recepción de las comedias ballet de Molière en los sainetes de Ramón de la Cruz

Abstract

In September 2015, at the beginning of this thesis, after my, fortunately, successful readings, I was requested a dichotomy about the genesis of Ramón de la Cruz's sainetes, which can be summarized in the following question expressed in my thesis project dissertation and which I addressed to my director and tutor, Dr. Esther Borrego, and also to my co-tutor, Dr. José Manuel Losada: Was the new sainete created by Cruz the product of the evolution of the Golden Age hors d’oeuvres, whose adaptation to the new eighteenth-century neoclassical tastes from France transformed the nature of the characters and motifs, now more in keeping with the new social structures of Madrid society? Or, did Molière's theater and, specifically, his ballet- comedies mean a continuous legacy for Ramón de la Cruz's sainetes, although with its nuances and adaptations to the Madrid scene? During the development of the chapters of this thesis, based on my long years of research, I present a series of factors that contributed to the creation by Ramón de la Cruz of the new eighteenth-century sainete, such as the high interest expressed and put into practice by those responsible for the renovation of the 18th century theatre. Indeed, an example of this was the writing, on February 2, 1789, of the Memorial for the reform of the Madrid theaters written by the professor of Poetics of the Royal Studies and official censor Santos Díez González, whose purpose was to renew the theater through the promotion of new plays, many of them translated, to later capture or publish them in the New Spanish Theater collection that appeared in the years 1800 to 1801 with neoclassical connotations. One of the main architects of the renewal process of the Spanish theater of his time was Ramón de la Cruz, who profusely translated Italian works, but above all French, and specifically, Molière's ballet comedies, because, in effect, almost all of his translations by the French playwright are based on this type of comedy, except for one: Les précieuses ridicules, which is a comedy of manners. However, the great ancestry and influence of Molière in Ramón de la Cruz's sainetes is not restricted only to their translations declared or authenticated by experts, but in the analysis that I have carried out of a corpus of thirty sainetes, similarities are perceived with Molière's comedies, in themes, situations, characters, or customs. I must clarify that I have also studied the influence of the traditional entremeses in Don Ramón's sainetes in order to discriminate in them the influences of Molière, from which they are not so much, although I believe that it has been demonstrated in this thesis that the entremeses reached the 18th century as an obsolete theatrical formula, called Trullo entremeses and, therefore, susceptible to renewal. In addition, I have provided this thesis with a theoretical-aesthetic framework, the aesthetics of the reception of Jauss, in which I ascribe both Molière's comedies and Ramón de la Cruz's sainetes. Lastly, I carry out a comparative study of Moliere's ballet comedies, a courtly spectacle (although it would later be performed in public theaters) made up of text, music, and ballet, whose elements are fully integrated, with sainetes, a type of end-of- party Ramón de la Cruz, also in principle represented in the court or main houses, because as of 1768, the year of the premiere of La presumida burlada, music abandons its significance as a musical accompaniment accessory to become an integrating element within the comedy endowed with functionality. dramatic. I am inclined to think that it could well have been Molière who inspired that musical transformation of Cruz's sainetes, through his ballet comedies.