This is probably a translation of a Le Calif de Bagdad, a libretto by Claude Godard d'Aucourt de Saint-Just (1769-1826) for an opera by Adrien Boieldieu (1775-1834), the leading French opera composer of his day. It was first performed in Paris in 1800; the license for Gálvez' translation, if such it is, is dated April 1801. The government-sponsored anthology of model plays, El teatro nuevo español (Benito García: Madrid, 1800-01) contains it in vol. 5.

Described in an ode, of which there are fragments in Serrano, 454-5.

A prejudice that the censors hardly bother to conceal: in August, 1803, a reader approves three secular plays «porque son un fruto no despreciable del ingenio de una muger». Her plays on sacred subjects must, however, be examined by an ecclesiastical censor because Gálvez has chosen «asuntos delicados» even though she is not one of «aquellas matronas romanas discípulas del máximo Doctor de la Yglesia, San Gerónimo». In November, another reader returns «seis tragedias que se dice de Da. María Rosa Gálvez». (Serrano, 448)

The censor may well have had some other reason for denying permission, since the play, a 49-page, one-act comedia de figurón, is harmless. The satirized characters are a foppish suitor who has never been to Paris but pretends to have spent two months there studying clothes and manners, and the foolish father of the young lady in question, who wants a fashionable son-in-law. There are some sly digs at French tradesmen, who can make money on anything; but there are also flattering comments about French intellectuals. As the printer's advertising says, the play's object is to poke fun at Spanish youth whose travels beyond the Pyrenees cause them to reject Spanish customs and teach them nothing but superficial manners and extravagance.

Catherine ou La belle fermière is the work of a musical prodigy, Julie Candeille (1767-1834), daughter of composer and singer Pierre Joseph Candeille. Mlle Candeille, according to the New Grove Dictionary of Opera (1992), débuted as a performer and composer by age thirteen, was a professional singer of opera before she was twenty, and an actress at the Comedie Francaise from 1785. She wrote and in 1792 starred in Catherine, for which she also composed and sang three songs, accompanying herself at the piano and harp. The play was a huge success, having 154 consecutive performances. It was also «revived many times over the next 35 years». She wrote at least four other dramas, usually with musical numbers, and an opera, as well as six novels, a book of essays on human happiness, memoirs, and instrumental music. Catherine was published twice in 1793, and again in 1797, 1803, 1829, and 1833, and there were translations into Italian and Dutch, besides Gálvez' Spanish versión. Gálvez might well have found Candeille, who was almost her exact contemporary -and a musician to boot- an interesting author to translate, especially in view of the popularity of Catherine in France.

It is curious that in spite of her own satire of persons whose Spanish is larded with French in Un loco hace ciento, her Catalina does in fact contain some obvious gallicism (e.g., ve aquí for voilá, manejarse, bella mamá for suegra, un bello día as an ironical expression), though many of the uncommon expressions that look suspiciously Gallic already appear in the Diccionario de autoridades.

Aguilar Piñal, Bibliografía de escritores españoles del siglo XVIII, no. 210.

Aguilar Piñal's list of plays performed in Seville in the period 1800-36 lists eleven performances of a work of the same title, from 1807 to 1833, with a questioned attribution to Gálvez. He also has an entry for El egoísta, a play included in Gálvez' Obras, as follows: Egoísta El o el amigo de la razón (C), trad. del fr. por M. Rosa Gálvez o José Marchena... [performed in 1829-30]. Francisco Aguilar Piñal, Cartelera prerromántica sevillana. Años 1800-1836. (Madrid: CSIC, 1968). Cuadernos bibliográficos 22, no. 491.

There was a three-month-long eruption in 1798. Gálvez may have written the poem at that time.

Documentos relativos a la Independencia de Norte América (Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores: Madrid, 1976), vol. III, pt. 1, p. 47, document no. 122.