Ferran Soldevila Award for the book <i>Del naixement del teatre modern al neoclassicisme (segles XVI-XVIII)</i>, published by UB Editions

The Fundació Congrés de Cultura Catalana has awarded Albert Rossich’s book the 40th Ferran Soldevila Award for Biography, Memoirs and Historical Studies, which rewards authors of biographical works or historical studies in the political, social, economic, biographical, artistic, literary or cultural fields relating to the Catalan-speaking countries. Del naixement del teatre modern al neoclassicisme (segles XVI-XVIII), which was also awarded the Serra d’Or Critics Prize for research in the humanities, summarizes theatrical and performing arts activity throughout the modern age in Catalan-speaking regions. 

The award ceremony, with free admission subject to venue capacity, will take place on Wednesday, 16 July, at 6.30 pm, at the Palau Robert in Barcelona. Among the attendees will be Agustí Alcoberro, president of the Foundation, and sociologist Mariona Lladonosa, who will deliver a talk on El Congrés i la nova historiografia, on the perspectives promoted by the History Section of the Congress of Catalan Culture. 

Theatrical activity in Catalan-speaking countries during the 16th-18th centuries is a chapter with huge gaps and still subject to many prejudices. However, this work by Albert Rossich aims to overcome the lack of knowledge that has existed about many aspects of this historical period, as well as to bring together subjects that have too often been treated separately: elite and popular theatre, dramatic works in different languages, texts and scenography, literature and music, actors and theatre companies, and venues. 

If we gather all the evidence about literary creation in the languages spoken in the territory and analyse the enduring vitality of the performing arts in Catalonia, it becomes clear that the performing arts played a leading role in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. The challenge of explaining this requires balancing academic rigour with dissemination, the only way to counteract the gaps and prejudices that have clouded the history of written and performed theatre in this period. 

The jury for the Ferran Soldevila Award, this year comprising Àngel Casals, Antoni Furió, Francisco Marco, Clàudia Pujol, Isabel Rodà and Queralt Solé, highlighted the book’s original subject matter, its great methodological difficulty and its wealth of information. They praised it for being the first monograph on theatre in the Països Catalans during the modern era, for presenting research accessible to the general reader, and for addressing both the thematic evolution of plays and the venues and performers of the period. The members of the jury also highlighted the book’s “study of the penetration of Castilian Spanish into theatre and its relationship with Catalan, thus contributing to the debate on the imposition of Castilian Spanish on Catalan culture, one of the central themes of historiography”. 

The book is part of the Història de les Arts Escèniques Catalanes collection (HAEC), directed by Carles Batlle and co-published by the Institut del Teatre and University of Barcelona Editions, and is part of the Catalan Performing Arts Research Project (PRAEC). With the aim of avoiding the conventional approach that tends to consider dramatic literature as the backbone of theatre history, the HAEC considers not only authors and books, but also the reality of the stage, production, exhibition, communication and consumption in each era. Playwrights are treated in parallel with composers, performers, directors, choreographers, set designers, costume designers, impresarios, critics, scholars and other agents involved in a performance. With this new publication, the collection now has two volumes: La teatralitat medieval i la seva pervivència, by Francesc Massip and Lenke Kovács, and Del naixement del teatre modern al neoclassicisme (segles XVI-XVIII), by Albert Rossich. 

Albert Rossich is professor emeritus of Catalan Philology at the University of Girona. A specialist in the history of Catalan literature from the 16th to the 19th centuries, he has critically edited important literary texts from the modern age and has written more than 200 research papers. He has coordinated several works that provide an overview of Catalan literature, including El teatre català dels orígens al segle XVIII (2001) and Panorama crític de la literatura catalana, in six volumes (2009-2011). Together with Pep Valsalobre, he has published and annotated the plays of Francesc Fontanella (2022).