This was the case with Manuel Fernández Caballero’s instant classic Gigantes y cabezudos. The music was downright reactionary in some respects, such as in its treatment of women’s rights.įor several decades, zarzuela could happily cater to a number of different ideologies during the politically convoluted years of the Second Republic (1931-1936), which preceded the Spanish Civil War, the same zarzuela could give rise very different readings. Those on the right might have appreciated the fact that zarzuelas rarely included a systemic or revolutionary critique of the status quo. Those with left-leaning, progressive tendencies were attracted by the genre’s focus on the pueblo (Spanish working and lower middle classes), sometimes coupled with moderate critique of the ruling classes. But the Banda Madrid continued cultivating the genre during their decades in exile.įrom the 1880s up to the initial decades of the twentieth century, zarzuela had become a mass entertainment form that cut across social classes and political ideologies, even though not everyone liked zarzuela for the same reasons. These current perceptions make it difficult to understand how Spanish Republican refugees who were fleeing Franco could be moved to tears when they listened to zarzuela on board the Sinaia. For this, “decades of the Right, god, fatherland and king” are held responsible. ![]() La Raíz portray Spain as a country held back by corruption, still suffering from an unsuccessful transition to democracy back in the 1970s. Zarzuela had become a mass entertainment form that cut across social classes and political ideologies. But as is the case with other musical genres indigenous to Spain, zaruela initially developed without ties to any particular political ideology. It is not by chance that the Spanish ska band La Raíz chose zarzuela for their song “Zarzuela y castañuela,” a scathing critique of present-day Spain. Zarzuela is nowadays perceived in the national imagination as an integral part of musical life under the Franco regime and, as such, outdated and conservative. But as is the case with other musical genres indigenous to Spain, they initially developed with no ties to one political ideology over another. ![]() Present-day Spaniards might regard these repertoire choices as unusual. For their first concert, for example, the Banda Madrid played instrumental excerpts from three zarzuelas, Spanish-language musical theatre plays ( Los sobrinos del Capitán Grant, La leyenda del beso, and La boda de Luis Alonso), as well as Puenteareas, a pasodoble (a double step military march) by Reveriano Soutullo, also a zarzuela composer. Every afternoon on the ship, they gave concerts on the deck, while their fellow passengers, all of them Spanish refugees, gathered around in admiration and nostalgia, listening to music they had known well in their home country. ![]() On board the Sinaia, the musicians quickly organized themselves under the name of Agrupación Musical Madrid (or Banda Madrid, for short).
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