TThe annual birthday celebra- tion of the Angela Peralta Theater — Feb.15 —often falls during events of Carnaval Mazatlan. In 2003, the 129th year since the theater then known as the Teatro Rubio first opened its doors in 1874, the birth date once again coincides with a major pre-Carnaval event. The election of the Queen of Carnaval 2003 from among eight candidates vying for the honor will take place in the theater that evening. Ricardo Urquijo, the manager of the theater, has decided that even so, the theater’s birthday should be marked with the customary reenactment of its namesake’s triumphant arrival in Mazatlan. Although that event has nothing to do with the date the theater opened — it was in August of 1883 that the famous Mexican diva’s ship docked here — it has seemed fitting to create this ceremony, according to Urquijo. Once again this year, the arrival of the legendary a“Mexican Nightingale” will be reenacted. History says that

among the crowd of well-wishers who met La Peralta’s ship on that gala occasion, several men unhitched the horses from her carriage, picked up the traces and pulled it themselves to the Hotel Rubio (now the Municipal Center for the Arts) next door to the theater. It is said that the diva was so touched by this warm welcome, she stepped out on the balcony of her second-floor room and sang “La Paloma” to the cheering crowd below. This event will be restaged at noon on Feb. 15 on the east side of the Plazuela Machado. Afterwards those attending are invited to the gallery over the theater’s portico for the inauguration of the first-ever exhibition of plastic arts in miniature. In other arts news, “The Abstract Years,” an exhibition of early works by Mazatlán’s most famous living artist, Antonio Lopez Saenz, continues now through March in the Mazatlán Archaeological Museum, Sixto Osuna 76, half a block east of Olas Altas. The museum is open daily, and admission is free.