A long-awaited event on our Christmas calendar arrived at last:
La Virgen del Tepeyac, a community theater performance of the famous story of Our Lady of Guadalupe put on by
El Teatro Campesino in
San Juan Bautista. Mission San Juan Bautista is only one of many historic and attractive structures to be seen, most of them arrayed around a broad grassy plaza. It's free to see the park which always looks like you've been transported to another, more gracious and rustic time.
As it happens, today is the Feast Day for Our Lady of Guadalupe, which made the popularity of today's performance extra meaningful. La Virgen is put on every other year by the Teatro, and every performance is eventually sold out. Attendees are often so love the play that they attend several times in one season and travel from far outside the area.
The actual performance is a retelling of the true story that took place in 1531 wherein Juan Diego, a converted Aztec Indian man was injured while out walking one day and prayed for help. Lo and behold an apparition appeared before him on a hillside, the virgin mother of Jesus, who requested that he speak to the Spanish bishop about building a temple in her honor. Naturally, Juan Diego was ridiculed and suspected as a kook by lesser priests and his own people. On two other occasions, the same apparition appeared to him and instructed him. The story concludes with the re-enactment of a miraculous image imprinted on Juan Diego's cloak, that of the virgin, and also that, miraculously, Castillian red roses cascaded from the cloak, proving to the bishop that the apparition was truly the mother of God and should be honored for her request.
The upshot of the whole legend is that a cathedral was built in what is now Mexico City to honor Our Lady of Guadalupe, to honor the Indios (the Spaniards' name for the Aztec indians), and to unify the beliefs of the Catholic faith with that of the native Aztec people. Juan Diego, poor ordinary shepherd, turned out to be quite a catalyst for change.
The performance is vivid and melodic, involving singing and dancing using the entire length and breadth of the inside of the San Juan Bautista mission church. 300 people at a time watch the play, which is in Spanish with an English libretto provided. Drums, whistles, incense, dramatic lighting and operatic singing as well as folk music that can lift you right up out of your seat; and the energy of the story and performers is terrific. Too bad photographs are not allowed; it is a visual feast and very unique.
Now Christmas - at least the Alta California styled one we love - is complete. After touring Old Monterey's beautiful adobes last night and then seeing the dramatic retelling of Our Lady's miracle today, all we really hope for is good health and peace for everyone we love.
Posts
2 comments:
Juan Diego's famous cape is, I understand, on full display at the basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. Non-believers have attempted to prove that the cape and its painted image of Mary are fake--that Juan Diego had to have been manipulated by some religious charlatan at the time. However, so far, also as I understand it, all attempts to prove the cape is fake have failed.
I learned the cape or cloak he wore is called a tilma and that usually such a garment would only survive about 20 years before it might disintegrate into moth-eaten bits of fiber. This miraculous tilma has apparently survived in the temple ever since 1531.
Post a Comment