Dec 19, 2009

The Bald Soprano | Historical Context

In the period between 1948, when Ionesco began writing The Bald Soprano, and 1956, when Peter Wood directed the play's first production in English at the Arts Theatre in London, the split that divided the world into two hostile super powers deepened and widened. Ionesco, who obtained French citizenship in 1950, the year the work was first performed, was cut off from his homeland, Romania, which by then was firmly within the Soviet bloc of communist satellite states.

The Cold War arms race began in earnest in that same...