Cecilia Valdes

Cecilia Valdés is both a novel by the Cuban writer Cirilo Villaverde (1812–1894), and a zarzuela based on the novel. It is a work of importance for its quality, and its revelation of the interaction of classes and races in Havana, Cuba.

The first version of the novel Cecilia Valdés o la Loma del Angel was published in Havana in 1839. After several revisions, the definitive and extended version was published in New York City in 1882. It has never been out of print in Spanish, and have been translated into several English editions (as Cecilia Valdes" or "Angel Hill). It is widely regarded as the best Cuban novel of the 19th century.

The story takes place in colonial Cuba around 1830. The young and beautiful light skinned mulatta, Cecilia Valdés, is the illegitimate daughter of powerful land magnate and slave trader, Cándido de Gamboa. Leonardo de Gamboa is his legitimate son. Leonardo falls in love with Cecilia, not realizing that she is his own half-sister, and they become lovers. At the same time, a poor black musician, José Dolores Pimienta, is also hopelessly in love with Cecilia. Cecilia rejects Pimenta's advances and conceives Leonardo's son.

However, love between Leonardo and Cecilia does not last. He abandons her and becomes betrothed to a white upper class woman, Isabel Ilincheta. Cecilia turns to the faithful Pimienta to plan revenge. On the day of his wedding, Leonardo is assassinated on the steps of the cathedral by Pimienta who acts on the instigation of Cecilia. Pimienta is executed, and she is thrown in prison.

Cecilia Valdés reveals the intricate problems of race relations in Cuba. There are the elite social circles of Spanish-born and creole whites; the growing number of mulattos, of which Cecilia is one, and the blacks: some slaves, some freed men. The blacks are also divided between those who were born in Africa and those who were born in Cuba, those who worked on the sugar plantation and those who worked in the households of the wealthy in Havana. Cecilia Valdés is a canvas displaying the sexual, social, and racial interaction of the Cubans of the day.

The zarzuela is in two acts with music by Gonzalo Roig. The libretto was by Agustin Rodríguez and José Sánchez-Arcilla, based on the novel Cecilia Valdés, o la Loma del Angel by Cirilo Villaverde. The storyline is about a tragedy of manners, love and revenge, in colonial Cuban society of the early 19th century.

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