Madness in Valencia

on programme

This performance doesn't have any called terms at the moment.

duration 1 hour and 35 minutes without interval

premiere

22. May 2014, SNG Nova Gorica

about text

Florian takes refuge in Valencia where he asks his friend Valerio for help, because he's afraid of the revenge for the murder of a love rival – the Spanish prince. Erifila ran away from home to avoid an unwanted marriage. The former hides in an asylum pretending to be insane, and the latter ends up certified because she's considered, having been robbed blind, to be insane. The newcomers – to whom the asylum offers shelter from murder charges and from the disclosure of defilement – each fall headlong in love with the other and, in feigning madness, they find love which is itself mad, as long as it is true.
The comedy Madness in Valencia, which belongs to the early period of the Spanish baroque author Lope de Vega (1562–1635), probably pioneers in introducing madness as a theme in European drama, tackling it by placing the action into a specialised health institution which Valencia had among the first in Europe. The situation comedy thus also testifies about psychiatric treatments of the time, but above all, it places love immediately next to madness by following it through the fleeting moment of its growth.

At the end of the season, the first Slovenian staging of the comedy about bubbling passion will be directed by a guest from Croatia, Nenni Delmestre.

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