Llanto Por Ignacio Sanchez Mejias

Maurice Ohana, Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejias

Who was Ignacio Sánchez Mejias, to whom Federico García Lorca addressed these four elegiac poems known as “llanto” (lament)? A bullfighter, poet, footballer, playwright, lecturer and inveterate seducer (a true “hidalgo”), Ignacio Sánchez Mejias fascinated his time in a Spain torn between royalists and republicans. He was gored during a fight and died after two days of agony. Lorca’s Hommage, one of his most beautiful texts, has given rise to numerous musical settings, including that of the young Maurice Ohana who, in the post-war period, wrote his first major work in a ritualistic, sacred and Mediterranean style that was to remain his aesthetic trademark throughout his life.

In partnership with the IESM of Aix-en-Provence