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María y Gregorio Martínez Sierra |
This page is © Mario Lerena 2016 & Christopher Webber Mail Christopher Webber or visit his Homepage |
María de la O Lejárraga was born in the ancient village of San Millán de la Cogolla on December 28, 1874. The daughter of a country doctor, she received all her schooling from her highly-cultured mother, Natividad García. While she was still a girl the family moved to Madrid: María studied Commerce and Teaching there, obtaining in 1897 – against opposition – a place as a municipal schools teacher in the capital. From that time she shared a friendship and literary interests with Gregorio Martínez Sierra (6 May 1881 – 1 October 1947) a student of philosophy and literature six years her junior, who came from a family of industrialists. Before marrying the couple had worked together to publish five volumes under Gregorio’s name, but only one under María’s: Cuentos breves (short stories) in 1899. They scored a sensational zarzuela success in 1914 with Usandizaga’s Las Golondrinas (1914), a collaboration continued in the opera La llama (1915). María forged a specially cordial working relationship with Turina, in the operas Margot (1914) and Jardín de Oriente (1922); and with Falla, who stayed with the couple during the writing of El amor brujo (1915) and the pantomime El corregidor y la molinera (1917), later recast for Diaghilev as the ballet El sombrero de tres picos (The Three-Cornered Hat, London 1919). As a stage director, Gregorio’s great achievement was the creation of an ‘Arts Theatre’ in Madrid’s popular Teatro Eslava, between 1916 and 1926. With its innovative care for the visual and aural aspects of its productions, the company served as a catalyst for artistic talents of various kinds – such as the young Federico García Lorca, who in 1920 premiered his early pantomime El maleficio de la mariposa there. They also presented the pioneering revue ‘In French Style’ El jardín encantado de París (1925) at the Eslava, jointly conceived with José Juan Cadenas.
María meanwhile turned to political and feminist activism. A leading figure in Madrid’s ‘Lyceum Club Femenino’ since its founding in 1926, she created her own Women's Association of Civic Education in 1931, and in 1933 was elected Socialist Deputy for the province of Granada. Exiled in Nice after the Spanish Civil War, she later moved to London, Paris, New York, Mexico and Buenos Aires. There she continued her tireless literary work (as María Martínez Sierra) until she died, forgotten and alone, on June 28 1974. Although sometimes accused of bourgeois sentimentality, the Martínez Sierra prose style at its best contributed an intimacy and humanity to the sophisticated aesthetic of Hispanic Modernism, which had been much influenced by the principles of fin-de-siècle Symbolism and Decadence. Their refined brand of theatre managed to be cautiously progressive and commercial at the same time. Special mention should be made of their penetrating characterization of female characters, which to a great extent reflect the existential anxieties of the author herself. © Mario Lerena (writer) & Christopher Webber (translator), 2016 [En español] [Back to top of page] |