Dissonances of Modernity by Irene Gómez-Castellano

Author:Irene Gómez-Castellano
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Department of Romance Studies
Published: 2021-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

PART II:

ZARZUELAS AND THEATER: DISSONANCES OF MODERNITY ON STAGE

MUSIC, TEXT, AND PERFORMING CULTURAL IDENTITY IN FRANCISCO BARBIERI’S (1823–1894) EL BARBERILLO DE LAVAPIÉS (1874)

YURI PORRAS, Texas State University

HISPANISTS who have studied the nineteenth-century zarzue­-la mostly regard it as one of the most prolific lyric theatrical aesthetics of its time, and in spite of a relatively recent flux of pu­blished works on the subject, both in Spain and parts of Latin America, scholarship has not quite given this genre its due.1 That zarzuela is inherently interdisciplinary makes it difficult to appreciate its cultural ramifications without studying both theatrical and musical components. In-depth studies on even the most popular and successful representations of the genre, or of its composers and librettists are not always easily accessible, and analyses on the various ways in which music and text interrelate structurally and ideologically even more elusive. It is precisely this void in criticism of thousands of extant zarzuelas (Webber xi), which flourished primarily during 1850–1950 and still performed to this day, that both literary cri­tics and musicologists alike must address. The genre became a space wherein composers and librettists searched Spain’s music-literary tradition from which to reestablish an authenticity through “native” lyric theatrical form, to resist foreign operatic influences considered by a sector of society as models to imitate. It is in Francisco Barbieri’s El barberillo de Lavapiés that we find the crystallization of a genre in whose music and libretto there is precisely this constant dissonance that mimics the struggle for the soul of the nation. Based on the critical edition of María Encina Cortizo and Ramón Sobrino, as well as on the 2004 performance directed by José Luís Moreno, this essay aims to discuss some of the structural, technical, and ideological functions of songs, instruments, and dances in El barberillo de Lavapiés, to illustrate how Zarzuela, as a genre, became a process of cultural hybridity from which a notion of “Spanishness,” that is to say, a sense of national identity continued to evolve.2

Scholars believe the name “zarzuela” was inspired in the seventeenth century by the picturesque palace filled with beautiful gardens where King Philip IV, himself a musician, eventually came to hold his “fiestas de la zarzuela.” In this sense, it was meant originally to entertain the monarch, particularly during times when he was unable to hunt (Cotarelo y Mori 43). The basic ingredients of what would later be known as zarzuela, however, were already sprinkled throughout the earlier theatrical works of figures from Juan del Encina, Lucas Fernández, and Gil Vicente, to Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and Calderón (Chase 36).3 The latter two were especially important, Lope, with what is considered the first Spanish opera, La selva sin amor, of which no music survives, and Calderón’s legacy of early (Baroque) zarzuela, such as El golfo de las sirenas, El laurel de Apolo, La púrpura de la rosa, La estatua de Prometeo, and Celos, aún del aire matan, which were created in collaboration with court composer Juan Hidalgo (1614–1685). Zarzuela in the seventeenth

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