Reglamento de Teatros, Acordado por el escelentisimo ayuntamiento de esta Capital, y aprobado por el Gobierno del Distrito Federal

Bookseller Notes

A very scarce mid nineteenth-century pamphlet setting out the management and regulation of theatres in Mexico City.The pamphlet announces the formation of a Junta de Teatros, and outlines its fifty-five responsibilities. These include every aspect of theatrical management, including promotion, dispute resolution, fixing ticket prices and opening hours, sourcing suppliers, and (coach and horse) parking restrictions. It closes with two printed letters by the secretary Cstulo Barreda, dated 9 and 18 September 1846, naming the board members selected.Such reglamentos were not new. 'Bourbon colonial administrators enacted the first comprehensive reglamento in 1786 in aneffort to create a standard body of rules and guidelines that would govern all aspects of the theater's operation (then the Coliseo) [...] Nineteenth-century elites adopted a number of updated reglamentos during the century' (Ingwersen). These aimed to uphold content and production standards in an era when the moral and educational power of the theatre was given significant weight. From the end of the nineteenth century, as moving pictures began to be popularised, these were relaxed (notably in the reglamento of 1894), as the theatre increasingly had to compete with the more baldly entertaining public arts.See: Lance Richard Ingwersen, Mexico City in the Age of Theater, 1830-1901 (Vanderbilt University, 2017) p. 208.WorldCat records a copy at the BNE only.