Queer Places:
Cementeri de Molins de Rei
Molins de Rei, Provincia de Barcelona, Cataluna, Spain
Margarita
Xirgu Subirá (18 June 1888, Molins
de Rei, Barcelona, Spain –
25 April 1969, Montevideo, Uruguay),
also Margarida Xirgu, was a Spanish stage actress,
who was greatly popular throughout her country and Latin
America. A friend of the poet Federico
García Lorca, she was forced into exile during Francisco
Franco's dictatorship of Spain, but continued her work in America.
The Second Republic would usher in a period where women had more rights under
the law, and where women were politically empowered for the first time.
Homosexuality was also stripped from the penal code, though there were still
ways for which lesbians could be charged, for example by being deemed
dangerous to the state, or simply being detained by the state even if their
behavior was not criminal. Prominent lesbians of this period included
Lucía Sánchez
Saornil, América Barroso,
Margarita Xirgu,
Irene Polo,
Carmen de Burgos,
María de Maeztu,
Victoria Kent and
Victoria Ocampo.
Notable plays in which Xirgu appeared include Como
tú me Deseas, La
casa de Bernarda Alba, and Mariana
Pineda. An opera, Ainadamar,
by the composer Osvaldo
Golijov and playwright David
Henry Hwang, based on Xirgu's life and her association with Lorca, was
premiered in 2003. A recording of the work released in 2006 on the Deutsche
Grammophon label (Catalog #642902) won the 2007 Grammy awards for Best
Classical Contemporary Composition and Best Opera Recording.
Born in Molins de Rei in
1888, her family moved first to Girona in
1890 and finally to Barcelona in
1896. Her first theater work was in 1906 with the Blanca character in Mar
i Cel, in the Teatre
Romea. In 1908 was really successful with Joventut de príncep in the Teatre
Principal. After that, in 1909, she began her film career with Guzmán el
Bueno. In 1910 she married Josep Arnall. In 1911 Àngel
Guimerà wrote “La reina jove” for her, and that year she created her own
theater company. In 1912 a Buenos
Aires businessman contracted her for working in South
America. She played the mermaid in La
sirena varada in 1934, written by Alejandro
Casona.[1] She
starred in the early film version of Garcia Lorca's Bodas
de sangre, filmed in February–March 1938, the only film version of a
Garcia Lorca play to star an actress who was a personal friend of the author
and who had appeared in his works onstage. It is Ms. Xirgu's only sound film,
and it has never been shown on American television or released on video. It
was first shown on Argentine television in January 1966. Xirgu died in Maldonado in
1969, after she had become a Uruguayan citizen according to civil rights
granted for exiles. In 1988 the Catalan
government repatriated her remains and they are now buried in Molins
de Rei. Xirgu's biography was written by Catalan author Antonina
Rodrigo. In 2018 the New
York Times published a belated obituary for her.[2]
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