Just ahead of you is a four-story cream and white corner building, with elegant wrought-iron details and tall windows with burgundy shutters; look for the ornate sign reading “Eslava” just above the entrance to spot the Slavic Theatre.
Now, let’s imagine you’re back in the bustling Madrid of 1871. Picture carriages rumbling down the narrow street and the air filled with anticipation as a crowd begins to gather outside this very building. In those days, fresh from the mind of Bonifacio Eslava, nephew of a celebrated composer, the place wasn’t even a theatre-it was a humble piano storage and assembly hall! That’s right, the first tunes here were the clinks and clangs of craftsmen piecing together Spain’s very first locally made pianos.
But Bonifacio had a dream, and soon this simple space, designed by architect Bruno Fernández de los Ronderos, became the Salón Eslava-a 1,000-seat theatre café where Madrid’s people piled in for a laugh, a tune, or a scandal. Local legends performed here, from famous comedians like Ricardo Zamacois to starlets with sparkling eyes and sharper wits. The theatre was, and still is, famous for its “chicas del Eslava”-a lineup of actresses and dancers who set the stage on fire and Madrid’s imagination alight. The place was never short on drama. In the early 1900s, the air would fill with the sounds of lively zarzuelas (Spanish operettas), comic revues, and yes-even the occasional scandal. One night in 1922, a playwright’s quarrel escalated above the orchestra pit, ending in gunfire! The tension! The theatre, it’s fair to say, has more dramatic stories offstage than on.
Yet, out of every twist, the Eslava transformed-at times a home to magicians of the stage like the maestro Vicente Lleó, at others, a den of musical revolutionaries led by Gregorio Martínez Sierra and his muse Catalina Bárcena. Even Federico García Lorca, Spain’s most famous poet, had one of his plays flop here before the theatre embraced new generations of artists and scandal-seekers alike.
The Eslava was nearly as famous for its offstage queens as its onstage ones: Celia Gámez, the dazzling Argentine, made this her headquarters, dazzling Madrid with sequins and song. Through the decades, the building’s ownership and fortunes changed hands with thrilling frequency. Sometimes it burned, sometimes it closed to avoid being sold cheaply, but it never lost its spirit-sometimes stubborn, sometimes wild, always alive.
By the late 20th century, as Madrid changed, so did the theatre: becoming the wild nightclub “Joy Eslava.” Imagine thumping music, disco lights bouncing off the old romantic balconies, and a crowd grooving where genteel ladies once swooned over operettas-not even a dramatic fire in 1998 could stop the party for long.
Fast forward, and now the theatre is reborn again as Teatro Eslava, thanks to a new renovation led by the French designer Philippe Starck. Today, the old arches and 18th-century boxes mingle with state-of-the-art lights, sound, and energy. Concerts, plays, parties-you name it, they do it! Madrid’s beating heart runs right through these doors, and standing here, just for a second, you can almost hear the lingering echoes of hundreds of opening nights: crowds laughing, glasses clinking, a distant star belting out a tune.
So, whether it’s a ghostly waltz from its piano-making past or the pulse of today’s music, the Teatro Eslava’s story is Madrid’s story-full of reinventions, surprises, and a few good laughs. Ready for the next adventure?
Interested in knowing more about the the girls of eslava, the joy era or the the return of teatro eslava
