El sueño de un rey

Artefactum, Spain’s leading medieval music ensemble, is celebrating three decades of activity in 2024. To mark the occasion, it is collaborating on this project with the well-known actor Manuel Galiana, whose career began at the Theatre School of the San Isidro Secondary School, and with the Cantabrian writer, Fernando Abascal. An authentic delicatessen of both music and the spoken word, perfect for a venue like the San Isidro Secondary School.

The character chosen to illustrate The King’s Dream (El sueño del rey) is Alfonso X el Sabio, a monarch for whom culture, its diffusion, study and defence was one of the mainstays of his unparalleled progress through his various courts. Throughout the four parts into which this musical-literary experience is divided, the audience will come to discover a king who was bold, intelligent, cultured, visionary, insecure and, finally, overwhelmed by and weary of all the intrigues and betrayals that beset him in the last years of his life. Music, of course, will be of the essence in this event, thanks to the performance of some of the Canticles of Saint Mary that Alfonso X and the literati, scholars and men of culture at the monarch’s various courts created and composed during his reign, and which were recorded in the marvellous Codices of the Canticles.

An Artefactum production

www.artefactumusicantigua.com

CAST & CREATIVE

Narration: Manuel Galiana

Vocals and medieval viola: César Carazo

Vocals and crumhorns: Alberto Barea

Organetto and hurdy-gurdy: José Manuel Vaquero

Flutes, capsule oboe, bagpipes: Ignacio Gil

Percussion: Álvaro Garrido

PROGRAMME

Preludio

CANTIGA PRÓLOGO / Porque trovar é cousa en que jaz

I

TOLEDO Y SEVILLA. LA LUZ DE LA MEMORIA

Cantiga / CANTIGA 166 / Como podem

Cantiga / CANTIGA 159 / Non sofre Santa María

II

UN REINO PARA UN SUEÑO

AI AMOR DE PERO CANTONE / Fernando Soares de Quiñones, siglo XIII

Cantiga / CANTIGA 292 / Moito demostrar a Virgen

III

LENGUA, LEYES, HISTORIA, CIENCIA Y POESÍA. MÚSICAS DEL CONOCIMIENTO

Preludio instrumental / CANTIGA 173 / Tantas en Santa María

Cantiga / CANTIGA 183 / Pesar a Santa María

IV

ALFONSO X, EL SABIO: UN REY PARA LA MODERNIDAD

Preludio instrumental / CANTIGA 285 / Do dem´a perfia

Cantiga / CANTIGA 386 / A que avondou do vinno a dona de Bretanna