User:Nine Tail Fox/List of works based on Federico García Lorca

File:Lorca (1934).jpg

Lorca in 1934

The life and works of the Spanish poet and dramatist Federico García Lorca (1898 – 1936) have had a strong influence on later artists and writers both in Spain and abroad, particularly because of his associations with the defeated Republican side in the Spanish Civil War and the tragic circumstances of his murder.

Works inspired by Lorca include adaptations of his own work, often pioneered by LGBT writers, and original works based on his life or reacting to his death.

Adaptations of Lorca's work

Poetry

• Jack Spicer's first collection of 'serial poems', After Lorca (1957), is presented as a collection of playful translations of Lorca's poems, including the "Oda a Walt Whitman" ('Ode to Walt Whitman'). The collection also includes six essays, written in the form of letters addressed to Lorca, in which Spicer discusses his approach to poetry and Lorca's influence on his work.

Original works inspired by Lorca's life and death

Poetry

In Spanish

• Luis Cernuda, a contemporary of Lorca and a fellow member of the Generation of '27, wrote the elegy "A un poeta muerto" ('To a Dead Poet') which was first published in the progressive magazine El Mono Azul in 1937, albeit in a censored form. Cernuda, who was also gay, had been deeply affected by Lorca's murder and he wrote passionately about what he felt Spain had lost: 'that's why they killed you: your emanation was green in our arid land, blue in our polluted sky'.

• Antonio Machado's poem "El crimen fue en Granada" ('The Crime Was in Granada'), from his collection La guerra ('War', 1937), is an elegy for Lorca written shortly after his death. The poem describes the murder in brutal language ('lead in his stomach, blood on his face') before going on to imagine Lorca in conversation with a female personification of Death.

• Pablo Neruda's poem "Oda a Federico García Lorca" ('Ode to Federico García Lorca), from the second volume of his collection Residencia en la tierra ('Residence on Earth', 1935), was written before Lorca's death and celebrates the two poets' close friendship and artistic collaboration, much as Lorca had done in his own "Oda a Salvador Dalí" ('Ode to Salvador Dalí', 1926). Neruda, though devastated by Lorca's death, did not write any poetry directly dealing with the murder, but he did contribute a eulogy in prose to an anthology of writing about Lorca assembled by Emilio Prados in 1937.

In other languages

• Allen Ginsberg's poem "A Supermarket in California", from his collection Howl and Other Poems (1956), includes Lorca as a character within the titular supermarket: 'and you, García Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?'. Lorca, along with Walt Whitman, is introduced into the poem as an emblematic counter-cultural figure.

• Michael Hartnett, who published an English translation of the Romancero gitano, used Lorca as a recurring character in his poetry. In "A Farewell to English" (1975), Hartnett writes of 'my Lorca holding out his arms to love the beauty of his bullets'.

• Harold Norse's poem "We Bumped Off Your Friend the Poet", from his collection Hotel Nirvana (1974), was inspired by a review of Ian Gibson's The Death of Lorca. An account of Lorca's death written from the unrepentant point-of-view of one of his murderers ('General Franco owes me a medal for putting two bullets up his ass'), the poem explores the sexual and political reasons behind the murder: 'he was a goddamn fag, and we were sick and tired of fags in Granada'.

• Nikos Kavvadias's poem "Federico García Lorca", from his collection Marabou (1933), is dedicated to Lorca's memory and juxtaposes the violence of his death with the Nazi occupation of Greece during the Second World War, particularly the destruction of the village of Distomo.

• Miklós Radnóti's poem "Federico García Lorca" (1937) is a tribute to Lorca written shortly after his death.

• The New York based Spanish language poet Giannina Braschi published El imperio de los sueños, a poetic homage to Poet in New York (1st edition: Anthropos editorial del hombre, 1988; 2nd edition: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico).
• Bob Kaufman and Gary Mex Glazner have both written tribute poems entitled Lorca.
• The Turkish poet Turgut Uyar wrote the poem Three Poems For Federico García Lorca including a line in Spanish:obra completas
• Deep image, a poetic form coined by Jerome Rothenberg and Robert Kelly, is inspired by García Lorca's Deep Song.
• Vietnamese poet Thanh Thao wrote The guitar of Lorca and was set to music by Thanh Tung.
• A Canadian poet named John Mackenzie published several poems inspired by García Lorca in his collection Letters I Didn't Write, including one titled Lorca's Lament.
• In 1945, Greek poet Odysseas Elytis (Nobel Prize for Literature, 1979) translated and published part of García Lorca's Romancero Gitano.
• Robert Creeley wrote a poem called "After Lorca" (1952)
• The Russian poet Yevgeni Yevtushenko wrote the poem "When they murdered Lorca" ("Когда убили Лорку") in which he portrays Lorca as being akin to Don Quixote—an immortal symbol of one's devotion to his ideals and perpetual struggle for them.
• British poet John Siddique wrote "Desire for Sight (After Lorca)" included in Poems from a Northern Soul

Musical works

Popular music

• The Clash's song "Spanish Bombs", from their album London Calling (1979), deals with the Spanish Civil War and uses a reference to Lorca ('Federico Lorca is dead and gone') as 'an enduring symbol of what was lost with the Republican defeat'.

• The Pogues' song "Lorca's Novena", from their album Hell's Ditch (1990), commemorates Lorca's death and links his murder unequivocally to his homosexuality: 'the faggot poet they left till last, blew his brains out with a pistol up his arse'. The Pogues' Shane MacGowan has spoken of Lorca's influence on his writing, saying that 'his poetry doesn't come from intellectual thought, it comes from the connection between emotion and seeing and feeling'.

Theatre, film and television

• Nilo Cruz's play Lorca in a Green Dress (2003)

• Peter Straughan's play The Ghost of Federico Garcia Lorca Which Can Also Be Used as a Table (1998) -------------. Straughan later adapted the piece into a radio play, broadcast by BBC Radio 3.

Musical works based on Lorca

• Greek composer Stavros Xarchacos wrote a large piece, a symphonic poem, a lament, with a complete Llanto por Ignatio Sanchez Mejias, by Lorca. Musical idiom of the piece is very true to Spain.
• Spanish flamenco singer Camarón de la Isla's album La leyenda del tiempo contains lyrics written by or based on works by Lorca and much of the album is about his legacy.
• Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas composed Homenaje a Federico García Lorca (a three- movement work for chamber orchestra) shortly after García Lorca's death, performing the work in Spain during 1937.
• The Italian avant garde composer Luigi Nono wrote a composition in 1953 entitled Epitaffio per Federico García Lorca.
• The American composer George Crumb utilizes much of García Lorca's poetry in works such as his Ancient Voices of Children, his four books of Madrigals, and parts of his Makrokosmos.
• Composer Osvaldo Golijov and playwright David Henry Hwang wrote the one-act opera Ainadamar ("Fountain of Tears") about the death of García Lorca, recalled years later by his friend the actress Margarita Xirgu, who could not save him. It opened in 2003, with a revised version in 2005. A recording of the work released in 2006 on the Deutsche Grammophon label (Catalog #642902) won the 2007 Grammy awards for Best Classical Contemporary Composition and Best Opera Recording.
• Finnish modernist composer Einojuhani Rautavaara has composed Suite de Lorca ("Lorca-sarja") for a mixed choir to the lyrics of García Lorca's poems Canción de jinete, El grito, La luna asoma and Malagueña (1972).
• Reginald Smith Brindle composed the guitar piece Four Poems of Garcia Lorca (1975) and El Polifemo de Oro (for guitar, 1982) based on two Lorca poems Adivinanza de la Guitarra and Las Seis Cuerdas
• Composer Dmitri Shostakovich wrote the first two movements of his 14th Symphony based around García Lorca poems.
• The French composer Maurice Ohana set to music García Lorca's poem Lament for the death of a Bullfighter (Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías), recorded by the conductor Ataúlfo Argenta in the 1950s
• Spanish rock band Marea made a rock version of the poem "Romance de la Guardia Civil española", named "Ciudad de los Gitanos".
• In 1968, Joan Baez sang translated renditions of García Lorca's poems, "Gacela Of The Dark Death" and "Casida of the Lament" on her spoken-word poetry album, Baptism.
• In 1986, Leonard Cohen's English translation of the poem "Pequeño vals vienés" by García Lorca reached #1 in the Spanish single charts (as "Take This Waltz", music by Cohen). Cohen has described García Lorca as being his idol in his youth, and named his daughter Lorca Cohen for that reason.
• Missa Lorca by Italian composer Corrado Margutti (2008) is a choral setting of the Latin Mass text and the poetry of Lorca. U.S. premiere, 2010.
• In 1967, composer Mikis Theodorakis set to music seven poems of the Romancero Gitano – translated into Greek by Odysseas Elitis in 1945. This work was premiered in Rome in 1970 under the same title. In 1981, under commission of the Komische Oper in Berlin, the composition was orchestrated as a symphonic work entitled Lorca. In the mid 1990s, Theodorakis rearranged the work as an instrumental piece for guitar and symphony orchestra.
• In 1989, American composer Stephen Edward Dick created new music for Lorca's ballad "Romance Sonambulo", based on the original text, and with permission from Lorca's estate. The piece is set for solo guitar, baritone and flamenco dance, and was performed in 1990 at the New Performance Gallery in San Francisco. The second performance took place in Canoga Park, Los Angeles in 2004.
• American composer Geoffrey Gordon composed Lorca Musica per cello solo (2000), utilizing themes from his 1995 three-act ballet The House of Bernarda Alba (1995), for American cellist Elizabeth Morrow. [1] The work was recorded on Morrow's Soliloquy CD on the Centaur label and was featured at the 2000 World Cello Congress. Three suites from the ballet, for chamber orchestra, have also been extracted from the ballet score by the composer.
• The Spanish guitarist José María Gallardo del Rey composed his 'Lorca Suite' in 2003 as a tribute to the poet. Taking Lorca's folksong compilations Canciones Españolas Antiguas as his starting point, Gallardo del Rey adds the colour and passion of his native Andalucia, incorporating new harmonisations and freely composed link passages that fuse classical and flamenco techniques.
• Catalán composer Joan Amargós wrote Homenatje a Lorca for alto saxophone in piano. Its three movements are based on three Lorca poems: "Los cuatro muleros, Zorongo, and Anda jaleo".
• Composer Brent Parker wrote Lorca's Last Walk for piano solo. This was on the Grade 7 syllabus of the Royal Irish Academy of Music's piano exams, 2003-2008.
• Greek musician Thanasis Papakonstantinou composed Άυπνη Πόλη' with part of Lorca's "Poeta en Nueva York", translated to Greek by Maria Efstathiadi.

Theatre, film and television based on Lorca

• Federico García Lorca: A Murder in Granada ( 1976) directed by Humberto Lopez y Guerra and produced by the Swedish Television. In October 1980 the New York Times described the transmission of the film by Spanish Television in June that same year as attracting "one of the largest audiences in the history of Spanish Television".
• Playwright Nilo Cruz wrote the surrealistic drama Lorca in a Green Dress about the life, death, and imagined afterlife of García Lorca. The play was first performed in 2003 at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. The Cruz play Beauty of the Father (2010) also features Lorca's ghost as a key character.
• TVE broadcast a six hour mini-series based on key episodes on García Lorca's life in 1987. British actor Nickolas Grace played the poet, although he was dubbed by a Spanish actor.
• There is a 1997 film called The Disappearance of Garcia Lorca, also known as Death in Granada, based on a biography by Ian Gibson. The film earned an Imagen Award for best film.
• Miguel Hermoso's La Luz Prodigiosa (The End of a Mystery) is a Spanish film based on Fernando Macías' novel with the same name, which examines what might have happened if García Lorca had survived his execution at the outset of the Spanish Civil War.
• British Screenwriter Philippa Goslett was inspired by García Lorca's close friendship with Salvador Dalí. The resulting biopic Little Ashes (2009) depicts the relationship in the 1920s and 1930s between García Lorca, Dalí, and Luis Buñuel.
• Bodas De Sangre (Blood Wedding) is the first part of a ballet / flamenco film trilogy directed by Carlos Saura and starring Antonio Gades and Cristina Hoyos (1981).