Avenida Theater (Buenos Aires)

 theatre, historical building

The Avenida Theater was inaugurated on Buenos Aires' central Avenida de Mayo in 1908 with a production of Spanish dramatist Lope de Vega's Justice Without Revenge. The production was directed by María Guerrero, a Spanish Argentine theater director who popularized classical drama in Argentina during the late 19th century and would establish the important Cervantes Theater in 1921. The theater became the chief venue for Spanish theater in Buenos Aires after the conversion of the Cervantes into the National Comedy Theater in 1933 and Federico García Lorca's play Bodas de Sangre was staged there that year. It soon earned renown for its varied operettas and zarzuelas (many led by renowned Spanish theater director Federico Moreno Torroba), as well as for special events, such as a 1939 production of Aida for the benefit of Spanish charities dealing with the aftermath of that country's Civil War.