 | In 1657 at the Royal Palace of El Pardo, King Philip IV ofSpain, Queen Mariana and their court attended the first performance of a newcomedy byPedro Calderónde la Barca, with music byJuan de Hidalgo.El Laurel deApolo traditionally symbolises the birth of a new musical genre which hadbecome known asLaZarzuela - after one of the King's hunting lodges, situated in a remotecountryside thick withzarzas or brambles. |
La Zarzuela was often visited by clowns and actorsfrom the city of Madrid, and perhaps the piece Calderón and Hidalgoprovided, running the theatrical gamut from classical opera to low slapstickand popular song - a bit likeDryden's work withPurcell inEngland - reminded the courtiers of a typical La Zarzuela entertainment.
Calderón - the greatest playwright of the day. Hidalgo -the best Spanish composer. They ushered in a new and swiftly developed form ofBaroque entertainment in which witty, pithy libretti were to be matched bymusic of high quality and extraordinary diversity. A charming example(available on Auvidis Valois CD) isViento es la dicha de Amor("Wind isthe poetry of love" - 1743) with music byJosé de Nebra), amixture of blank verse and prose, opera arias, short choruses with a flavour ofMonteverdi, popular songs with castanets and delectably orchestratedinstrumental interludes.
The coming of Italian opera composers made the native formincreasingly unfashionable, though as late as 1786Boccherini wrote azarzuela for the palace ofLa Puerta de la Vaga in Madrid -LaClementina is a scandalously neglected masterpiece of Spanish lyrictheatre, to a libretto by the poetRamón de la Cruz, the Spanish rival toMetastasio. Clearly, the zarzuela was still worthy of the highesttalents Spain could muster.
After a fallow period - money was short and Spain reduced to a lowebb of prosperity, artistic creativity and morale - we reach the second half ofthe 19th Century, theGolden Age of the Zarzuela.
As at first, the essence of the new flowering was the exoticmixture of genres - zarzuela is not going to appeal to anyone who likes theirtheatre 'purely' one thing or the other. The classic pieces of the time are apotent brew of sophisticated musical ensembles and arias, mixed in with verseand prose dialogue, popular songs and lowlife comedy characters. Some are longand operatic in scope - thegénero grande. Others are short,often gently titillating one-act farces, mostly set in the less salubriousparts of Madrid - parts all too well known to many of the pleasure-seeking menin the audience, at least. These are the immensely popularsainete andgénero chico zarzuelas. In between, there are zarzuelas of allshapes and sizes, overflowing with every flavour of musical theatre.
Barbieri, properly regarded as the musical foundingfather of the 19th century movement, wrote zarzuelas which remind us ofRossini, Donizetti, Viennese operetta and even Gilbert and Sullivan (compare,for example, the troop of policemen in his masterpieceEl barberillo deLavapiès with their roughly contemporary colleagues inThePirates of Penzance) |  |
WithBarbieri, as with his great contemporaries such asBretón,Chapí,Chueca andCaballero musical originalityis not as high a priority as vitality, theatricality and sophisticated style.And, as withSullivan in England, these composers are at their bestwhen, paradoxically, they seem to be taking things easiest. Their individualflavour comes across more strongly in the zarzuelas than in their more"serious" concert, church and operatic works.
If there is a single reason for this, it lies in one fact -Madrid. The spirit, sights and sounds of the capital pervade nearly all thegreat zarzuelas, large or small, from this classic period - and of many fromthe 20th century. Even the composers who came from outside the city or thecountry, from Boccherini through to the basqueGuridi, became steeped in its heady atmosphere,madrileños heart and soul just as much as the natives such asChueca or the great writerPerez de Galdós. Many of the very best zarzuelas take their lifefrom theirmadrileño setting, includingBretón's classicLa verbena de la paloma andChapí's equallybelovedLa Revoltosa.
The first half of the new century saw the repertoire enriched by ahuge quantity of work. Some of the composers -Vives,Sorozábal,Torroba - are at least a match technically andimaginatively for the previous generation. The 20th century sees adiversification of the range of the zarzuela, tragicverismo shockerslikeLas golondrinas (byUsandizaga) jostling withexotic operetta (Luna'sEl niño judio)and small-town musical (Guerrero'sLos Gavilanes).
Yet the most enduring works of the 1920's and 30's - Vives'Doña FrancisquitaandTorroba'sLuisa Fernanda -are firmly rooted in themadrileño tradition, with itstonadillas,fandangos andhabaneras. These composers, withothers of at least equal popularity such asSerrano andAlonso, were well aware of contemporary trends inItalian, French and German music, without ever losing sight of the debt theyowed to their great Spanish predecessors. This lends their zarzuelas a flavourunlike anything else in the operatic repertoire.
| With the onset of the Civil War, the zarzuela is more orless played out as a vital form. Only the evergreen and chameleonSorozábal kept the formalive into the 1950's, and his later productions, such as the civil warallegoryBlack, el payasoand the urbaneDonManolito, increasingly come to resemble Broadway musicals as much asearlier zarzuelas. The legacy of nearly one hundred years and thousands ofworks remains incomparably rich. |
© Christopher Webber 2000
| Much has been written about the composers of zarzuela, very much less about the merits of the writers who put their plays at the musicians' service. Yet the text is the main vehicle for the comedy, the satire, the drama, the characters and their feelings at every period of the zarzuela. In most cases, at least half of the running time will be "straight" theatre without music. These texts vary from brilliant to anodyne or worse, but the finest writers created a body of high quality work which sets the Spanish lyric theatre apart from comparable forms. |
Many of the playwrights of the Spanish Golden Age gave space tomusic within their theatrical work. This was a period where inertia inscientific studies was mirrored by brilliant innovation in literature and thearts, andLope de Vega led the way in allowing music a new dynamismwithin the drama. During the career of his successorPedro Calderón de laBarca we first see native works striving to strike a balance betweenwords and music. With Calderon that the history of the zarzuela begins, ahistory dominated in the 17th century by verse texts on mythological andquasi-historical topics, but with that same admixture of popular elements thathas characterised zarzuela throughout its existence
The onslaught of Italian opera gradually forced native opera intosmaller compass, and the 18th century is the high water mark of the shorttonadilla andsainete - the equivalents of the Italianintermezzi such asLa Serva Padrona andPimpinone. Theoutstanding writer of tonadillas wasRamón de la Cruz, whose texts broke themythological mould of earlier times by reflecting popular life and speech.Short, with little plot, character was the mainstay of thetonadilla,the bud which was to blossom into the all-conqueringgénero chicolate in the following century. The zarzuela itself went into temporary eclipse.Longer native examples, by de la Cruz and others, adopted Italian models as toversification, style and content.
| Not until the 1850's does the full-length native drama resurface. The growth of nationalist consciousness brought about the birth of the modern or romantic zarzuela, a mighty movement in which writers such asVentura de la Vega,Luis de Olona,Luis Mariano de Larra andFrancisco Camprodón were at least as proactive as their better known musical colleagues. |
|
French was the dominant cultural force of the time, and theseplaywrights drew their plots more or less from French romantic plays, mixingaristocratic courtiers with their servants in populist settings. Their chosenform was the three-actzarzuela grande. Their chosen literary means waselegant, formal verse.
A return to the aesthetic of Ramón de la Cruz, led byVentura's sonRicardo de laVega, brought about another shift in the literary course of zarzuela.Thegénero chico ischico ("little") by virtue of length,not quality or potential complexity. Writers tended to write such pieces in oneact, lasting about an hour. Originally they were text only, but music was soonincorporated. Subject matter is simple, clear and comedic, mixing sentimentaland cynical, romantic and realistic, machismo with submission to the superiorintelligence of women. The prime characteristic ofgénero chicois its root inmadrileño culture, the life of the people,presented for the people. Verse drama gives way to vernacular prose, rhyme andmetre being reserved for thecantables, or sung parts. Certain words andexpressions, otherwise without meaning, made their appearance in thesecantable sections.
Inevitably, many texts from this period aresuperficial, implausible and slipshod, relying on cheap vulgarity and easylaughs. Still, many good writers emerged during this new Golden Age, admirablefor their fluent dialogue, clear characterisation and wit - as well as theirfacility to dovetail "book and lyrics" seamlessly. Of theseCarlos Arniches was thegreatest, though theAlvarezQuintero brothers,MiguelEchegaray,GuillermoPerrín & Miguel de Palacios, andMiguel Ramos Carriónare almost equally noteworthy.
After the first decade of the new century, the focus of zarzuelaagain changes. The three-actzarzuela grande reappears. The influence ofViennese operetta, with its exotic settings and situations, pervades themadrileño género chico. Sophisticated literary contentbecomes the norm, as zarzuela comes to be more carefully planned - in contrastto therevistas ("revues") which were quickly written and performed topopular audiences without much thought as to artistic longevity.
| Figures such asFederico Romero & Guillermo Fernández Shaw,Anselmo Cuadrado Carreño, andLuis Fernández de Sevilla carried on the work of the best zarzuela playwrights, employing scrupulous and varied theatrical craft, sophisticated versification and structure, plus an awareness of the great tradition from which they had emerged. If these later writers occasionally lack the fresh, vital originality of the earlier generation, they make up for it in solid technique and consistency. |
© Pedro Gómez Manzanares &Christopher Webber 2000