It was extremely positive and very applaudable that our high cultural authorities continue to rescue the new generations of our country; a genre so special and so cultivated by actors, singers, playwrights, composers, technicians and manuals, writers and others; a genre as important and sociologically inalienable, as it is without fear of being wrong, that of… zarzuela.
The show that the Fine Arts Opera Studio presented last Wednesday, at the El Granero Theater, Xavier Rojas, under the name “Estampas de Zarzuela”, under the direction of Leopoldo Falcón, obtained the positive opinion of many spectators who They considered they had enjoyed a unique and complete fun, because it is a performance expressed with great joy, experience and tradition, which when cultivated correctly, constitutes a worthy pride for Mexico.
Meanwhile, international researchers agreed that one of the most representative characteristics of zarzuela is its immense capacity for adaptation: a fact that has allowed it to remain a “living” genre for more than three centuries; since its birth in the Golden Age.
And therefore, new styles and new music were soon adopted as their own by a genre that has functioned as an immense repository that has given rise to a formula of musical theater in Spanish, which combines recited scenes and musical numbers as well as such diverse combinations. , For example: Jealousy makes stars (1672), Acis and Galatea (1708), The farmers of Murcia (1769), Play with fire (1851), The Gran Via (1886), The La Paloma festival (1894), Pharaoh’s court (1910), Luisa Fernanda (1932) or The strawberry basket (1951), which reveal the immense versatility of this genre of musical theater that was born within operatic shows, but that has changed in a thousand and one ways in its more than three hundred years of life.
Currently, zarzuela as a living genre stopped being composed on a massive scale in the 1950s. Other popular urban music and its media arrived with force and took their place in the preferences of younger audiences.
In fact, finding a composer called to write zarzuelas since then is quite a rarity. And the very few works that are defined as such –The homeless (1977) and Fuenteovejuna (1981), by Moreno Buendía, or Maharaja (2017), by Guillermo Martínez – when analyzed, they show their nature as musical comedies.
Since 2018 we have been waiting for the premiere of Cops and robbers, zarzuela commissioned by the Teatro de la Zarzuela in Madrid from Tomás Marco. Without considering that the future of the genre is not so much in the writing of new scores but in achieving its (re)discovery by new generations.
University musicology has made great progress in the editing of scores and academic studies on zarzuela and its authors, but it is still necessary to connect with young audiences, and that can only be achieved by the magic of theater.
However, time will tell us if projects like Bramble, zarzuela made by young people and for young people, they achieve their goal.
And, continuing with the good news, we will add that; The cast of scholarship recipients from the Fine Arts Opera Studio (EOBA) adds one more success to its extensive program of activity for the year 2023 with the staging of Zarzuela printswhich is directed by one of the most extensive connoisseurs of the so-called chico genre in Mexico and Spain: the teacher Leopoldo Falcón. The group, now directed by the teacher Gabriela Flores, will take this work to the Teatro El Granero Xavier Rojas of the Bosque Cultural Center in a special function that was presented on Wednesday, November 22 at 8:00 p.m., with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Government of Mexico and the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature (Inbal), to through the Fine Arts Opera Studio.
Founder of the well-known Mexican Zarzuela Company, the Mexican actor, singer and stage director Leopoldo Falcón (1955), known as “El Señor Zarzuela”, for being a tireless promoter of this genre since practically his childhood, is the author and director of this staging that brings together some of the most brilliant passages in the history of zarzuela in Mexico and the world. The program is made up, specifically, of the zarzuela scene and concertante Windmills, by Pablo Luna and Luis Pascual Frutos; the entry of “Manuela” of the work The Chulapona, by Federico Moreno Torroba and Federico and Guillermo Fernández-Shaw; and “Song of Youth”, from the work Doña Francisquitaby Amadeo Vives and Federico and Guillermo Fernández-Shaw.
Furthermore, scene and concert singer of The hawks, by Jacinto Guerrero and José Ramón Martín; scene and parade Water, sugar and liquor, by Federico Chueca and Miguel Ramos Carreon; “The Sparks” (from The carriage), by Francisco Alonso, Emilio González and Luis Martínez Román, and the seguidillas of The pigeon festival, by Tomás Bretón and Ricardo de la Vega. Sopranos Hildelisa Hangis, Damaris Lezama, Diana Mata, Luz del Carmen Ramírez and Dulce Guadarrama take prominent part in the singing and acting actions; the tenors Jorge Echeagaray and Alberto Galicia; the bass-baritone Ricardo Ceballos; the countertenor Gabriel Vargas; and the mezzo-soprano Teresa Fuentes, all of them accompanied by the pianist Miguel Brito Leopoldo Falcón created this show at the invitation of the Fine Arts Opera Studio with his previous director, Maria Katzarava —who has stood out internationally in this genre— and now with its new director, the mezzo-soprano Gabriela Flores.
The show – says its director Leopoldo Falcón, who began in zarzuela with the company of Pepita Embil – brings together the “most representative and beautiful fragments of the lyrical genre, seasoned with texts of great literary quality written by the most prominent authors of the time. ”. Furthermore, he said, “they are linked to musical passages by composers who are an obligatory reference within zarzuela for their melodies that today are emblematic and distinctive.”
All of this has resulted in “a show full of talent, grace, spark and salt within a genre that is representative of a nation—Spain—but that in Latin America positioned itself to become a —classic—; and, which has survived for more than 200 years.” Leopoldo Falcón —also a student of Enrique Alonso Cachiruloa great promoter of zarzuela in Mexico—acknowledges that Zarzuela prints It could not have become a reality without the talent that the EOBA-Inbal scholarship students possess and characterize. “The young people have the talent, and in these functions they have demonstrated their abilities and enthusiasm; have allowed us to make a current, vital and current zarzuela gala, bringing LA Zarzuela closer to the new generations and demonstrating, at the same time, that this characteristic musical expression has strength, vigor and current presence: Zarzuela printsa show by Leopoldo Falcón by the students of the Fine Arts Opera Studio (EOBA), was presented on Wednesday, November 22 at 8:00 p.m. at the El Granero Theater Xavier Rojas from the Forest Cultural Center….And, like all this, we loved it; We gladly said goodbye with a big kiss.