Lyric Comedy of 19th Century Malaga: The Cathedral Collection of Tonadilla

There was no news about the existence of musical plays in the Archive of the Cathedral of Malaga. This article presents a collection of twenty-six stage tunes in manuscript copies from the 19th century preserved in its Music Section. In addition to contextualizing the representation of this type of works on Malaga stages in the 19th century, the linguistic features of figure drama are studied, specifically the speech performances of the gypsy characters. Southern features are added to some literary fixed characteristics, thus giving rise to a variety that was already called flamenco in the mid -19th century and which will continue to be used as a linguistic distinctive in the artistic and musical manifestations of this genre: pronunciation of 's' as 'c', the aspiration of initial 'h', the systematic loss of the intervocalic consonant 'd', loss of the final consonant 's' and the initial consonants, etc.