Julián Romea

In 1816 he moved with his family to Alcalá de Henares, but when his father was banished for his liberal past and fled to Portugal, his mother returned to Murcia with her children in 1823; there the young Romea studied the humanities at the Major Seminary of San Fulgencio; by then he already intervened as an actor in amateur pieces.

In 1832 he was hired as a young leading man by the Juan Grimaldi Company and was an actor at the Teatro del Principe, on whose stage he starred in the first performance of a play by William Shakespeare directly translated from English: Macbeth, in 1838.

[citation needed] In 1839 he challenged the theater critic Ignacio Escobar to a duel with pistols for a bad review, although as both of them were lousy shooters their shots missed; however, Romea's stray bullet killed one of his godfathers, a truly grotesque tragedy, but in keeping with those times.

[4] Replacing Grimaldi at the end of 1840, he directed the Teatro del Príncipe in Madrid, which he completely refurbished, modernizing the lighting and stalls, and thanks to his efforts, Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch was able to premiere The Lovers of Teruel on January 19, 1837, in a function for the benefit of the first actor Carlos Latorre and with the participation of others equally famous, such as Bárbara Lamadrid and Julián Romea himself.

And as the famous romantic actor said: “When from the eternal night / in the lost immensity / the wind of oblivion passes / for my hope and my love, / I only ask you, because you were / the light of my life, my glory / a I sigh to my memory, / and to my grave, a flower.”[citation needed] He stood out for his naturalness and good taste in declamation.