Recasting a Comedia by Pedro Calderón de la Barca: Parallel Adaptations of El mayor encanto, amor in Brussels and Amsterdam, c. 1670

Abstract

In this article, the two parallel adaptations in Dutch of Calderón’s El mayor encanto, amor are discussed for their textual and scenographic changes. The first adaptation is the mythical play Ulysses in’t eylandt van Circe by the playwright Claude de Grieck, published in Brussels in 1668. The tragedy De toveres Circe is the second adaptation. It was translated by the playwright Adriaen Bastiaensz de Leeuw in Amsterdam in 1670. The main argument of this article is that the Dutch authors changed theatrical and scenographic elements of the original by Calderón on the basis of the Italian opera Ulisse all’isola di Circe (performed in Brussels in 1650 and another time in 1655) by the Italian composer Gioseffo Zamponi on the one hand, and the horrific tragedy Medea by the Dutch playwright Jan Vos on the other hand. Therefore, this article proposes that El mayor encanto, amor by Calderón was disseminated differently in Brussels than in Amsterdam with regards to the emotional effects, the scenography of both works and the ideas about an adequate poetics to move the spectators.