Bodas de sangre

This work originated from a news story: the so-called Níjar crime, which took place in Almería in 1928, in which a bride fled with her lover on her wedding day and the groom's brother killed the fugitive. Federico García Lorca transformed that event into a poetic tragedy—premiered in Madrid in 1933—in which desire defies the laws of family, the land, and honor. Written while Lorca was co-directing *La Barraca*—the university troupe that brought classical theater to the towns and public squares of Spain—the play brings together his passion for folk tradition and his drive to create a new kind of theater. Here, the characters bear archetypal names—the Mother, the Groom, the Bride—yet they burn with an immediate, palpable humanity. Blood, the knife, the horse, and the forest accompany a story that moves inexorably toward the inevitable. With *Blood Wedding* (*Bodas de sangre*), Lorca achieved one of the great milestones of 20th-century Spanish theater: an intense, luminous work about love, freedom, and the high price paid by those who attempt to fight against destiny.