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Titles

English title: The Concert at Saint Ovide
Notable variations on Spanish title: El concierto de San Ovidio: parábola en tres actos
Date written: 1962
First publication date: 1962
First production date: 16 November 1962
Keywords: morality > crime, violence > social, power > intimidation, power > use and abuse, love > friendship, love > desire
Genre and type: tragedy

Title information

The Saint Ovide Fair was one of several entertainment fairs held annually in Paris in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Pitch

Are you coming to the St. Ovide Fair? This year, the star attraction is Señor Valindin’s orchestra of blind musicians. Come and see them in their silly costumes! Laugh until you cry! Yet behind the scenes, one musician – David – dreams of being more than a figure of fun. He wants show the France of 1771 that the blind have feelings and dreams of their own. A tale of greed, jealousy, love and death, El concierto de San Ovidio (The Concert at Saint Ovide) explores the best and worst of human behaviour.

Synopsis

El concierto de San Ovidio (The Concert at Saint Ovide) depicts the exploitation of six blind beggars by the impresario Valindin who enlists them for an orchestra to perform at the St. Ovide Fair in Paris, 1771. This exploitation is fiercely resisted by one of the beggars, David, who believes that the blind are more than circus animals to be paraded for the public’s amusement.

The play is divided into three acts. Act 1 begins in the Hospital of the Three Hundred. Valindin wants to hire six blind musicians to play in an orchestra in the café that he owns. Interested in the guarantee of regular meals and the prospect of meeting women (they hope!), five of the blind musicians decide to join up. The sixth, David, joins because he is eager to show the public that blind people can be talented and useful members of society. Valindin has hired a violinist, Lefranc, to teach the men their parts, which they practise at Valindin’s residence. David, however, insists that they can do more musically than simply learn a tune by ear. He is very protective of the youngest member of the group, Donato. Because of this, Valindin instructs Adriana, his lover, to gain Donato’s affections, so that, in turn, David will remain with the orchestra.

In act 2 the first performance of the orchestra takes place. Gilberto, the singer and the most child-like of all of them, is dressed ludicrously as a king. His crown is adorned with ass’s ears and he sits on a throne crudely made up to look like a peacock. The other members of the orchestra are dressed in a similarly foolish manner with pointy hats and silly paper spectacles – an ironic touch given their blindness. While Valindin extols their appearance, David realises that they are being set up for ridicule. Despite this, Valindin threatens the men into performing. The audience in the café laugh uproariously at the sight on stage. Only one man, Valentin Haüy, objects to way the men have been paraded for ridicule. His objections get him thrown out of the café at the end of this act.

In act 3 Adriana and David find themselves alone together at Valindin’s house. David tells Adriana of Donato’s traumatic experience with women in the past. In sympathy for him, Adriana seduces Donato. Valindin returns home and catches his lover in bed with Donato. Enraged, he beats Adriana savagely and leaves for the café to get drunk. Angered by this, David, who was present for the beating, follows Valindin to the café armed with the spare key he has located in Adriana’s jewellery box. Inside the café, a scene in the dark ensues. David snuffs out the candle meaning that Valindin is also blind. Used to the dark, David murders the confused and drunk Valindin. Initially, the police do not consider that a blind man could do such a thing. Adriana and David plan to run away together. Jealous of their plans, however, Donato betrays David to the police.

The play ends with Valentin Haüy alone on stage. Nearly thirty years have passed since he visited Valindin’s café that day and was shocked at the treatment of the blind musicians. He has heard that one of them has since been hanged. We assume this is David. Another might be the disheveled blind man who has been begging and playing on street corners for years. He plays only one tune – Corelli’s adagio, which is the tune the blind musicians used to play together. This blind beggar never talks, although we are led to assume it is Donato, silently nursing his guilt at betraying David. Valentin Haüy explains that the disgust he felt in the café all those years ago led him to dedicate his life to helping the blind. In the end, then, it seems that David’s dream of a world in which the blind are fully integrated into society is gradually become reality … although, tragically, he never lived to see it.

Sources

The Hospital of the Three Hundred (L’Hôpital des Quinze-Vingts) was set up in the eighteenth century in Paris. It is named after the fact that it was built to house 300 blind residents.

The Foire Saint-Ovide (Saint Ovide Fair) was one of several entertainment fairs held annually in Paris in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It ran from mid-August to mid-September, offering spectacles, music, food and drink to the public. An eighteenth-century French engraving depicts a grotesque blind orchestra playing at the Parisian fair in 1771. Valentin Haüy (Paris, 1745-1822) was inspired by visiting the fair in 1771 to found the first school for the blind. He wrote a number of letters recalling his decision, and Buero actually uses excerpts from one of these letters, dating from 1800, in the epilogue of his play. The 1771 engraving of the musicians from the Foire Saint-Ovide also inspired Buero, as Derek Gagen explains:

When Buero was interviewed for the magazine Sirio, early in 1962, he learned of the event in September 1771 which inspired Valentin Haüy to devote his life to the education of the blind. The first number of Sirio had reproduced the engraving of the concert given by blind musicians at the Foire Saint-Ovide in 177I and it inspired Buero to write El concierto de San Ovidio. (Gagen 1986: 642)

In act 1 David mentions a woman called Mélanie de Salignac. This blind woman lived in France in the eighteenth century and, despite her disability, managed to teach herself to read using cut out letters that she could feel rather than see. Victor Dixon points out that although the play is set in 1771, de Salignac in fact died in 1766 (1996: 45).

• Dixon, Victor. 1996. ‘ “Pero todo partió de allí …” El concierto de San Ovidio a través del prisma de su epílogo’. In El teatro de Buero Vallejo: homenaje del hispanismo británico e irlandés, eds. Victor Dixon and David Johnston, pp. 29-56. Liverpool, Liverpool University Press (in Spanish)

• Gagen, Derek. 1986. ‘ "Veo mejor desde que he cegado": Blindness as a Dramatic Symbol in Buero Vallejo’, The Modern Language Review, 81.3, 633-45

Critical response

El concierto de San Ovidio (The Concert at Saint Ovide) has been studied from a number of perspectives. The play premiered in November 1962, a time of considerable political unrest in Spain – there had been student and worker strikes earlier that year and a state of emergency declared in Madrid in May. This background has led some scholars to consider how the themes in the play relate to the socio-political context in which it was written. Other studies have focused on the symbolism of the blindness in the play. The efficacy and impact of the play’s epilogue, delivered by the character of Valentin Haüy, has been the subject of considerable debate. Some critics and academics consider the epilogue to be an unnecessary and overly worthy addition. Others argue that the epilogue is an effective tool for distancing spectators from the action and thus engaging their critical judgement as to what they have seen (see Dixon 1996 for a summary of the debate).

• Dixon, Victor. 1996. ‘ “Pero todo partió de allí …” El concierto de San Ovidio a través del prisma de su epílogo’. In El teatro de Buero Vallejo: homenaje del hispanismo británico e irlandés, eds. Victor Dixon and David Johnston, pp. 29-56. Liverpool, Liverpool University Press (in Spanish)

Editions

• Buero Vallejo, Antonio. 1962. ‘El concierto de San Ovidio’. Primer Acto, 38, December

• Buero Vallejo, Antonio. 1972. El concierto de San Ovidio: parábola en tres actos, 3rd edn. Madrid, Escelicer

• Buero Vallejo, Antonio. 1986. La Fundación. El concierto de San Ovidio. Madrid, Colección Austral

• Buero Vallejo, Antonio. 1990. El concierto de San Ovidio; El tragaluz, 3rd edn, ed. Ricardo Doménech. Madrid, Castalia

• Buero Vallejo, Antonio. 1994. Obra completa, vol. I. Madrid, Espasa Calpe

• Buero Vallejo, Antonio. 2002. Obras selectas, eds. Mariano de Paco and Virtudes Serrano. Madrid, Espasa Calpe

• Buero Vallejo, Antonio. 2006. El concierto de San Ovidio, 21st edn, ed. David Johnston. Pozuelo de Azarcón, Espasa Calpe

Useful readings and websites

• Dixon, Victor. 1996. ‘ “Pero todo partió de allí …” El concierto de San Ovidio a través del prisma de su epílogo’. In El teatro de Buero Vallejo: homenaje del hispanismo británico e irlandés, eds. Victor Dixon and David Johnston, pp. 29-56. Liverpool, Liverpool University Press (in Spanish)

• Dixon, Victor. 2007. ‘Music in the Life and Early Dramatic Works of Antonio Buero Vallejo’. In Spanish Film, Theatre and Literature in the Twentieth Century, eds. David George and John London, pp. 237-60. Cardiff, University of Wales Press. See pp. 248-50 in particular.

• Pennington, Eric Wayne. 2010. 'Employing Personal Intertexts: The Alcoholic Impresario of El concierto de San Ovidio'. In Approaching the Theatre of Antonio Buero Vallejo: Contemporary Literary Analyses from Structuralism to Postmodernism, pp. 123-32. New York, Peter Lang

• Pennington, Eric Wayne. 2010. 'Musical as Polyvalent Signifier in El concierto de San Ovidio'. In Approaching the Theatre of Antonio Buero Vallejo: Contemporary Literary Analyses from Structuralism to Postmodernism, pp. 93-8. New York, Peter Lang

• Pennington, Eric Wayne. 2010. 'The Biblical Archetpyes of El concierto de San Ovidio'. In Approaching the Theatre of Antonio Buero Vallejo: Contemporary Literary Analyses from Structuralism to Postmodernism, pp. 79-92. New York, Peter Lang

Entry written by Gwynneth Dowling. Last updated on 9 May 2012.

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