Redescubriendo el patrimonio musico-teatral valenciano. Una mirada al esquet valenciano a partir de los estrenos del Teatro Regional (1926-1927)

Abstract

On October the 8th, 1926, the Regional Theater of Valencia opened its doors to represent, in a single season and exclusively, «Valencian esquets». This musical-theatrical genre was conceived with the ultimate aim of preserving Valencian traditions. For this, its creators combined traditional Valencian music, customs and the Valencian language with jazz and European modernity. In this way, the Regional Theater could be considered an urn where to save and protect the Valencian tradition with the help and support of modernity from Europe.
This is where the importance that space -understood as a place of representation- has in the development of the Valencian esquet as a new genre. The Regional Theater is the headquarters where a project was born and developed. That project, led by the journalist and writer Rafael Gayano Lluch (1890-1954) and the composer Miguel Asensi Martín (1880-1945), was so remarkable that it involved more than fifty Valencian artists. Hence the importance of the construction of this theater, because without this meeting place and without the characteristics that this space presented, the genre would not have been the same and therefore its relevance in Valencian life would not have been so deep at all.