Zarzuela

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Zarzuela [ θaɾˈθwela ] is the name for a typical Spanish genre of musical theater that has some similarities with the French opéra comique or operetta . Like this, the Zarzuela is characterized by alternating spoken and sung text. The music of the Zarzuela consists mainly of original compositions, supplemented by folk songs or popular hits that have been selected to match the plot.

history

Origins

The Zarzuela originated in the early 17th century as a courtly festival in the style of a Singspiel and is primarily associated with the name of the poet Pedro Calderón de la Barca . The verse dialogues of his pieces were enriched with musical numbers in the style of the vaudeville of the Parisian fairground theaters .

In 1634 , in a wooded area near Madrid in the north, the so-called Pardo , King Philip IV had a castle built in the middle of dense blackberry bushes , which was given the name Palacio de la Zarzuela (from Spanish Spanish zarza : "Blackberry bushes"). The king's brother, Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand of Spain , later governor of the Spanish crown in the Netherlands, was a great fan of hunting and often used this little castle to spend the night. When the weather did not permit hunting, the king had the comedians come from the theaters of the nearby capital for his entertainment. Today the castle is the private residence of the Spanish King Juan Carlos I.

The creator of the theatrical genre was the poet Pedro Calderón de la Barca . The oldest Spanish opera that has survived both in terms of text and music is Celos aun del aire matan by Calderón and Juan Hidalgo , who set several works by Calderón to music .

These pieces were so well received that a diverse and diverse stage genre developed from them, encompassing tragic, comic, folk and heroic subjects. From around the middle of the 18th century, these pieces no longer found an audience and went under. With this, the music also disappeared, which often only existed as set pieces and was taken from other pieces. In general, the Italian opera buffa came on the stage.

Revitalization

The Zarzuela was not revived until a hundred years later, in the second half of the 19th century, when “national cultures” emerged all over Europe. Rafael Hernando (1822–1888), Emilio Arrieta (1823–1894) campaigned for this, and with the world premiere of the three-act work Jugar con fuego (Libretto by Ventura de la Vega ) in 1851, which was a resounding success, Francisco Asenjo Barbieri created for the first time the "Zarzuela Grande". This and the following works of the musical genre had little in common with the "old" Zarzuela, apart from the fact that dialogue and pieces of music alternated.

The Zarzuela was built in 1857 by an artists' association whose aim was the maintenance and renewal of the Zarzuela, the Teatro de la Zarzuela in Madrid . At the end of the 19th century, no fewer than ten theaters in Madrid were devoted exclusively to these works.

Asenjo Barbieri achieved the first culmination of this musical genre in 1874 with his three-act El Barberillo de Lavapies , a work that also found its way into many other countries and became a model for three generations of Spanish stage composers: Barbieri thus completed the decisive step of creating Spanish subjects independently processors to join folk music.

Important composers of this revival were Asenjo Barieri and Emilio Arrieta Ruperto Chapí y Lorente , Tomás Bretón , Federico Chueca (who was more than able to capture the atmosphere of popular Madrid), M. Nieto and Tomás López Torregrosa, among other well-known names such as Vicente Lleó , Amadeo Vives , Emilio Serrano and Rafael Calleja.

Jerónimo Giménez y Bellido , who mainly cultivated Andalusian music, succeeded with La tempranica ( Die Frühaufsteherin , 1900), another important work in which music (similar to the Offenbachiads ) has the task of expressing attitudes related to language and the Text remains denied. The difference to the operetta is particularly clear, in that extensive speaking scenes and densely packed music scenes result, which have their own folksy surprise strategy as a dramaturgy.

20th century

At the beginning of the 20th century, the zarzuela of the multi-act "género grande" came to the fore again, to whose bloom Federico Moreno Torroba , Pablo Luna, Francisco Alonso, Jacinto Guerrero, Rafael Millán, Reveriano Soutullo, Juan Vert and Pablo Sorozábal contributed. Even Enrique Granados , Manuel de Falla and Daniel Alomía Robles wrote zarzuelas. Daniel Alomía Robles is best known as the composer of the Zarzuela El Cóndor Pasa (1913) with the famous song of the same title. The most important representative, however, is José Serrano Simeón (1873–1941), who, like no other before him, found his own denominator and did so with his “dramatic relentlessness” (Klotz).

After the First World War , similar to international operettas, the Zarzuela began to decline, which, as there, can be seen in the textbooks and librettos. The Spanish Civil War in 1936 and the emerging film put an end to Zarzuela enthusiasm. The attempt of the Franco regime to stylize the Zarzuela into a national symbol met with rejection.

It was only with the preparations for the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America (1992) that the musical legacy was remembered, and various foundations made it possible to record high-quality CDs.

See also

Important figures in the Zarzuelas are also the Gigantes y Cabezudos ( giants and giant dwarfs , also Zarzuela by Manuel Fernández Caballero, UA Madrid 1898).

literature

  • Henning Mehnert: The Spanish Zarzuela. Not just an operetta but also no opera. In: Opernwelt Jahrbuch 1990 . Orell Füssli, Zurich 1990, ISSN  0474-2443
  • Volker Klotz: Operetta - portrait and manual of an unheard of art . On Zarzuela in general: pp. 197–213. With a total of fifteen works a. by Barbieri, Chueca, Caballero, Giménez, Serrano. Updated and expanded new edition, Bärenreiter, Kassel 2004, ISBN 3-7618-1596-4 .
  • See Piper's Encyclopedia of Music Theater (article on individual Zarzuela composers from Hidalgo to Moreno Toroba).
  • Pierre-René SERNA, Guide de la Zarzuela - La zarzuela de Z à A , Bleu Nuit Éditeur, Paris, November 2012, 336 pages, 16.8 × 24 cm, ISBN 978-2-913575-89-9 (Prix du Syndicat de la critique 2013 in the category «Meilleur Livre de Musique»)

Web links

Commons : Zarzuela  - collection of images, videos and audio files