After a brief welcome to the day by Habanos S.A. executives that reiterated a few of the points from Monday’s press conference, the first seminar focused on the 150 year history of Cuba’s cigar factory lectores. The lector sat on an elevated stage or chair and would read the day’s news and then a wide range of books, including Homer’s Iliad, Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and well as works from around the world. The readings led to strikes in some instances, as rollers heard the words of philosophers, anarchists, scientists, economists, businessmen and other thinkers and authors of the 19th and 20th centuries. Hugo was so moved that his book was read in the factories that he sent handwritten letters of thanks, which too were read to the rollers. Lectores earned their job for a number of reasons: certainly they needed an appealing voice, but they also had to have the ability to both select works that would be of interest to the rollers and then deliver it appropriately, with proper inflections and intonations to capture the intent of the author. Three current lectores from H. Upmann, La Corona and Partagás ...
↧