Capilla del Baratillo: The Music of Holy Week
Why is it significant?
On Calle Adriano, wedged between ordinary houses and within sight of the bullring, a small chapel opens its doors straight onto the pavement. Peek inside and you will see candles, silver and a Virgin dressed in rich embroidery. This is the chapel of the Brotherhood of the Baratillo.
Key Facts
| Place | Capilla del Baratillo: The Music of Holy Week |
|---|---|
| Address | Calle Adriano, 41001 Sevilla, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 37.38630, -5.99750 |
| Part of Walk | Opera City: Carmen, Figaro and Don Juan in Seville's Arenal |
| Generated | Generated |
On Calle Adriano, wedged between ordinary houses and within sight of the bullring, a small chapel opens its doors straight onto the pavement. Peek inside and you will see candles, silver and a Virgin dressed in rich embroidery. This is the chapel of the Brotherhood of the Baratillo.
The name tells you what this corner used to be. A baratillo is a little bargain market, and outside the city walls, on the sandy ground of the Arenal, there was one where second-hand goods changed hands, and the occasional stolen cloak too. In the late seventeenth century neighbours began to gather in prayer around a cross set up in this rough district, and from that humble devotion grew one of the best-loved brotherhoods of Seville.
If you want to hear Seville's own music, forget the opera for a moment and come back in Holy Week. Some sixty brotherhoods carry their images through the streets, and the Baratillo goes out on Holy Wednesday. The sound is unforgettable: brass bands with cornets and drums, and slow processional marches like Amarguras, written in 1919 and still able to make grown men cry on the pavement.
And then, sometimes, everything stops. A single voice rises from a balcony, unaccompanied, singing a saeta, a short, piercing song with flamenco roots addressed straight to the Christ or the Virgin passing below. The procession halts, the crowd goes silent, and for a minute the whole street holds its breath. No composer from Vienna ever wrote anything quite like it.
Being a stone's throw from the ring, the Baratillo has long been close to the world of bullfighting, and toreros have come here to pray before an afternoon in the arena. In Seville, the sacred and the profane share the same few streets, and often the same people. Now walk north through the Arenal's narrow streets to Calle Carlos Cañal, where a Franciscan church hides behind a plain front.