Wow, Las Meninas sounds fascinating (see Jack Gohn's linked 2010 bww review below).
The plot concerns the affair between Maria Theresa of Spain, Queen of France, wife of Louis XIV, and her African servant, Nabo.
In fact, Louise Marie Therese of Moret (1664-1732), a black French nun, was believed by a great many to be Maria Theresa's daughter. Yet more proof that, contrary to the criticism often raised here on bww about black actors playing characters like Fantine or the Mother Abbess, there were in fact black people living in Europe throughout much of recorded history and certainly between the 1600s and World War II and on.
Contrary to Gohn's review, however, Maria Theresa of Spain is not the infanta who appears in Velazquez's famous 1656 painting known as "Las Meninas." That princess is Maria Theresa's sister, Margaret Theresa of Spain, Archduchess of Austria, later Holy Roman Empress, Queen of Germany, and Queen Consort of Hungary and Bohemia.
Also contrary to Gohn's review, there is no record of Velazquez or his contemporaries ever referring to the painting as "Las Meninas." Early catalogues of the painting listed it as "La Familia." The first record of it ever being called "Las Meninas" is from an 1843 inventory of the Prado's collections.
https://www.broadwayworld.com/baltimore/article/Lynn-Nottages-Powerful-If-Somewhat-Incoherent-Las-Meninas-Receives-a-Strong-Staging-at-UMBC-20010101.
Updated On: 8/18/15 at 08:27 AM
