Zarzuela
During the reign of King Charles III, political problems provoked a series of revolts against his Italian ministers; these were echoed in theatrical presentations.
The older style zarzuela fell out of fashion, but popular Spanish tradition continued to manifest itself in shorter works, such as the single-scene tonadilla (or intermezzo) of which the finest literary exponent was Ramón de la Cruz.
In the 1850s and 1860s a group of patriotic writers and composers led by Francisco Barbieri and Joaquín Gaztambide revived the zarzuela form, seeing in it a possible release from French and Italian music hegemony.
The elements of the work continue to be the same: sung solos and choruses, spiced with spoken scenes, and comedic songs, ensembles and dances.
Costume dramas and regional variations abound, and the librettos (though often based on French originals) are rich in Spanish idioms and popular jargon.
Musical content from this era ranges from full-scale operatic arias (romanzas) through to popular songs, and dialogue from high poetic drama to lowlife comedy characters.
Felipe Pérez y González [es]'s zarzuela La Gran Vía (1886) is considered a masterpiece of the género chico genre of Spanish plays.
With the onset of the Spanish Civil War, the form rapidly declined, and the last romantic zarzuelas to hold the stage were written in the 1950s.
Whilst Barbieri produced the influential zarzuela grande El barberillo de Lavapiés, the classic exponent of the género chico was his pupil Federico Chueca, whose La gran vía (composed with Joaquín Valverde Durán) was a cult success both in Spain and throughout Europe.
[4] From about 1900, the term género ínfimo ("degraded" or "low genre") was coined to describe an emerging form of entertainment allied to the revista (revue) type of musical comedy: these were musical works similar to the género chico zarzuela but lighter and bolder in their social criticism,[5] with scenes portraying sexual themes and many verbal double entendres.
One popular work from the género ínfimo years is La corte de Faraón (1910), by Vicente Lleó, which was based on the French operetta Madame Putiphar.
The zarzuela continued to flourish in the 1930s, thanks to composers of the stature of Pablo Sorozábal – who reinvigorated it as a vehicle for socio-political comment – Federico Moreno Torroba, and Francisco Alonso.
There have been no significant new works created since the 1950s; the existing zarzuela repertoire is costly to produce, and many classics have been performed only sporadically in recent years, at least professionally.
Some years earlier, impresario José Tamayo worked a theatrical show of the same name which popularized pieces of zarzuela through several national and international tours.
In the final years of the 19th century, as modernisme emerged, one of the notable modernistas, and one of Felip Pedrell's pupils, Amadeu Vives came onto the Barcelona scene.
Less known performers such as Ana María Iriarte, Inés Ribadeneira, Toñy Rosado, Carlos Munguía, Renato Cesari, and others frequently lent their voices to the recordings.
Many well-known singers, including Victoria de los Ángeles and Montserrat Caballé, have recorded albums of zarzuela songs and arias.
[12] In April 2009, BBC/Opus Arte released a Blu-ray disc of a July 2006 performance of Federico Moreno Torroba's Luisa Fernanda with Plácido Domingo and Nancy Herrera, recorded at the Teatro Real de Madrid with Jesús López-Cobos conducting.
[13] In the United States, the Jarvis Conservatory of Napa, California, between 1996 and 2005, mounted several full zarzuela productions, subsequently issued on DVD and online.
