Francisco Camprodón y Safont (4 March 1816 – 16 August 1870) was a Spanish playwright, poet, politician and librettist, originally from Catalonia.

[1][2][3] Francisco Camprodón was born in Vich (as it was written at that time), a regional centre and manufacturing town with a focus on textiles, in the hill country roughly 100 kilometres to the north of Barcelona.

[4] He enrolled to study Jurisprudence at the University of Cervera, where he was a student near contemporary of the philosopher-theologian Jaime Balmes: the two became close life-long friends.

Camprodón at this point gave up on the drugs and the medical advice and rapidly returned to the robust good health which he would enjoy virtually till the end of his life.

[3] Having been sent south on account of his political activism, he recalled that as a boy he had written verses, and resolved to embark on a writing career.

[1] Another friend from his time in Cadiz was the stage actor José Valero: the idea that he might find a wider audience as a writer for the theatre began to form in his mind.

[1] The Teatro Español in Madrid had been reopened (and renamed) in 1849, with a series of practical enhancements which seemed to reflect and adumbrate a sustained theatre revival in Spain during the middle and later decades of the nineteenth century: for Camprodón that provided an added spur to his work on the stage play.

It was a long night, even by Madrid standards, and ended in a lengthy walk through the streets during which Camprodón completed his exposition of the drama to Rubi.

A second stage work, "Espinas de una flor" ("Thorns of a flower") was premiered at the "Teatro del Drama" in 1852,[10] followed by others as the decade progressed.

The Zarzuela genre alternates between spoken and sung sections, thereby according greater importance to the script than other forms of music drama such as opera.

[13] Beyond the theatre, Camprodón's was inspired by the Africa War of 1859/60 to publish his "Carta a don Juan Prim", an adulatory "letter" addressed to the hero of Los Castillejos, in the form of a series of Quadrillas.

[9] The composers with whom Camprodón principally worked were Emilio Arrieta, Francisco Asenjo Barbieri, Cristóbal Oudrid and Nicolau Manent.