Federico Villoch Vázquez

Journalist, playwright, Cuban theatrical entrepreneur. The most renowned and prolific author of Cuban vernacular theater and one of the entrepreneurs of the successful Teatro Alhambra.

Federico Villoch is credited with more than four hundred works for the stage, of which only seven have survived to the present day. With the skill of a chronicler, he transformed current events into theatrical happenings presented with grace and ease, which is why his works constitute a portrait of the first decades of the Cuban Republic.

His family moved to the capital when Federico had barely turned two years old; thus, because of the environment in which he grew up, he came to be considered a Havanan. Furthermore, in Havana he studied Law, a career that he ultimately abandoned to devote himself to journalism and theater.

Villoch's first theatrical premiere (which turned out to be a public failure) was his play "La gran pesca", staged at the Irijoa theater (later Martí). In 1896, however, with "La mulata María", he began an uninterrupted series of successes that, by 1909, after fourteen years of authorial work, had reached 152 dramatic titles.

"La mulata María", with music by the celebrated Cuban musician Valenzuela, is a work full of mischief, music and congo dances, and dialogue mixed with the idiomatic deformations of black speech, which evidences the influence of the original bufo.

In 1900 he formed a company with set designer Miguel Arias and brothers José (Pirolo) and Regino López, both actors, to launch the legend of Teatro Alhambra, with its thirty-five years of intense artistic life, the setting for the majority of his successes. To his craft and talent as a playwright, Federico Villoch added his extraordinary capacity as a theatrical entrepreneur who, amid dozens of rival companies, helped make Teatro Alhambra the most important institution of the period and one of the myths of Cuban theatrical history.

Among his dramatic productions stand out: Napoleón (1908), La casita criolla (1912), La danza de los millones (1916) and La isla de las cotorras (1923), one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the company's enormous repertory; all with music by Jorge Anckermann.

In 1936 the zarzuela company of the Martí premiered his last piece, Guamá, with music by Rodrigo Prats. It also included eight of the earlier works of this popular author in its repertory.

As a journalist he founded the magazine Luz y Sombra. He was an editor of El Fígaro. He collaborated in Unión Española, La Caricatura and La Habana Elegante.

As for books, he was the author of numerous works from 1892, when he published "Por esos mundos. Impresiones de un viaje" until his classic "Viejas postales descoloridas. La guerra de independencia", which came out in 1946, eight years before his death.

Already retired from theater, the playwright returned to journalism, precisely with his "Viejas postales...", which he initially published in installments in the "Diario de la Marina".

Upon his death in Havana at the age of 86, Villoch left unpublished a novel about the war of independence, titled "Marta Flores", of which he had published a fragment in Fígaro. He frequently used the pseudonym Cascabel.