Gerónimo Giménez

[1] A son of the Granada musician José María Giménez and his wife Antonia Bellido, he moved with his family to the city of Cadiz, where he soon became a choirboy.

A scholarship permitted Giménez to enrol at the Conservatoire de Paris in June 1874, where he studied violin with Jean-Delphin Alard and composition with Ambroise Thomas.

He co-wrote the music of a number of his works with Amadeo Vives, who hailed him the "musician of elegance" because of his sense of rhythm and easy melodies.

Giménez skillfully managed to combine moments of intense lyricism with scenes of colloquial explosion in a zarzuela which, according to Carlos Gómez Amat, "had all the qualities of the genre and none of the faults".

Towards the end of his life, Giménez lived in a precarious economic situation, which was made worse by the Madrid Conservatory's refusal to grant him a professorship in chamber music.