Paca la Roseta | for ten-string guitar by Frank A. wallace

House of Bernarda Alba
I wrote Ovejita and Paca la Roseta to be performed with the entire play The House of Bernarda Alba at Emerson College in April of 2010. The music was commissioned by the College and the play’s director and adapter Sunil Swaroop and his assistant Zac Baker-Salmon. It was my first music for a staged production. The full version of both pieces were not debuted until Duo LiveOak’s performance at the 2010 St. Joseph Guitar Festival in St. Joseph, Missouri.

Ovejita, “The little lamb,” is the only actual song from the play, sung by grandmother Maria Josefa who is considered senile, but truly she is the wise fool in Lorca’s conception. She describes a haven on the beach where she and the lamb she carries, claiming to have given it birth, will find peace. Paca la Roseta is an incidental character, a lascivious young woman who is carried off on horseback, willing and bare-breasted, by the virile young men of the town. That being a stark contrast to the cloistered lives of Bernarda’s five adult daughters.