SOURCE: “Music as Sign and Symbol: Buero's Lázaro en el laberinto and Música cercana,” in Hispanofila, Vol. 120, No. 3, May, 1997, pp. 47–55.

In the following essay, Halsey traces Buero Vallejo's use of music in Lázaro en el laberinto and Música cercana.

Aesthetic beauty provides hints about inner meanings that discursive reason ignores or distorts. In Buero Vallejo's theater there is both revelation and concealment as the playwright speaks through art, music, metaphor and symbol, suggesting truths that transcend any totality of rational explanation. In many of Buero's plays music is important; however, in none is its role more central than in two of his very recent plays. The notes of the lute played by Coral in Lázaro en el laberinto (1986) and the melodies from the window across Alfredo's patio in Música cercana (1989) express deep truths, spiritual principles important to his entire theater.

In L...