Tuna de la Facultad de Medicina de Córdoba - Agua, Azucarillos y Aguardiente | Текст песни

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• Agua, Azucarillos y Aguardiente

Agua, azucarillos y aguardiente
by Federico Chueca
libretto by Miguel Ramos Carrión

® recommended recording

Agua, azucarillos y aguardiente ('water, sweets and spirits') was a common cry of street vendors in turn of the century Madrid, and Carrión and Chueca's most popular sainete - first seen at the Teatro Apolo on 23 June 1897 - evokes its time with matchless verve. The virtue of Carrión's unpretentious one-act social comedy lies in the simple, unsentimental thrust of its farcical action. Although the satire is genial enough, the writer was not afraid to hold up the pretentious hypocrisy of the "literary" middle classes to ridicule; and in a world where everyone seems financially up against it, the down-to-earth, cynical practicality of the street vendors comes across as comparatively honest.




Agua, azucarillos y aguardiente - vocal score cover
Chueca's music is appropriately direct and tuneful, and none the less evocative for that. Modern musicologists have pointed out the unobtrusive skill with which the various numbers - pasodoble, waltz, pasacalle, mazurka - effectively make up an integrated "dance suite". Nobody needs to point out Chueca's tight theatricality and musical vitality. Numbers like the delicious waltz-quartet, the street cries and choruses give the score of Agua, azucarillos y aguardiente a perennial freshness which a century has hardly dimmed. The street cry is memorably shouted out towards the end of the popular medley-overture - and in case anyone wonders about azucarillos, they are substantial meringues, delicately flavoured with cinnamon, lemon and other fruits, then folded into the shape of boats. Further, they are still available for ready money in at least one shop on the Calle Major!

Scene 1 - An ordinary lodging room in Madrid. Asia, an ardent young woman with literary ambitions is reciting her latest poetic effusion to her pet, a caged goldfinch. Her profligate and unsuccessful addiction to publication has led her and her mother, Doña Simona, into financial difficulties. Simona is relieved to have received a letter from Asia's rich uncle, who is ready to tear up their IOU's on condition that Asia agrees to marry her country cousin. Asia, furious, imperiously tells her mother that she belongs either to her beloved Serafín, or to the tomb. Mama, however, entertains serious doubts as to Serafín's intentions. True, he has taken them both out for evening treats in the Recoletos Gardens, including the azucarillos to which she is so partial, but beyond that - no word of honourable marriage. If he says nothing tonight, Doña Simona tells Asia that they must leave Madrid for good, and go to their rich uncle in the sticks.

Their waggish landlord, the lame Don Aquilino, comes to demand the long overdue rent. Delicately, he tells Doña Simona she must pay up or get out. The old lady tells him that Asia has written a poem in praise of the botijo, a common Madrid drinking pot, which is bound to be a big hit in one of the Madrid comics, and that another of her volumes is due to be published in Barcelona (which is news to their author). Don Aquilino counters that unless he gets something on account by tomorrow at latest, he will send in the bailiffs. Doña Simona desperately pleads that Asia's fiancé Serafín, the son of a great politico and ex-minister, will guarantee them. Aquilino knows he has money - he lent him 4000 pesetas himself only yesterday. Serafín will be rich when his father dies, but until then he is living off IOU's paid for by his grandmother. The landlord congratulates them a little guardedly on their good fortune, and leaves them courteously. So there it is - Asia sees that Serafín must now prove his devotion to her in practical not poetic terms: "Oh how Horrible is the Prose of Life". The drop curtain falls, and we read Asia's ludicrously effusive sonnet "The Apotheosis of the Botijo&q

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