Zarzuela - Twentieth Century

Twentieth Century

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"): these were musical works similar to the género chico zarzuela but lighter and bolder in their social criticism, 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.

In the second decade of the century, the influences of operetta and the English followers of Sullivan such as Lionel Monckton made themselves felt, in works such as Molinos de viento and El asombro de Damasco (both by Pablo Luna), before the Spanish tradition was reasserted in Vives's Doña Francisquita (1923). 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.

However, the Spanish Civil War brought a decline of the genre, and after the war, its extinction as a live genre was almost total. There were no new authors and the compositions are not renovated. 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.

Interest has been renewed in zarzuela since the late 1970s and the death of Francisco Franco. The genre has again found favour in Spain and elsewhere: younger people, in particular, have been drawn to its lyrical music and theatrical spectacle. Spanish radio and television have dedicated time to zarzuela, not least in a popular series of programs produced by TVE and entitled Antología de la zarzuela ("Zarzuela Anthology"). These were based on lip syncs of the classic recordings of the 1950s. Some years earlier, impresario Jose Tamayo created a theatrical show of the same name which popularized zarzuela through several national and international tours.