We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
High art, popular culture and music theatre
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
In 1888 in Turin, Italy, Friedrich Nietzsche wrote the following about La Gran Vía (1886), one of the best-known pieces of the zarzuela repertoire:
[It] is the strongest thing that I have heard and seen . . . Cenerentola [by Rossini] is a thousand times too kindhearted when compared with the Spaniards . . . Offenbach's Schöne Helena (The Beautiful Helen) coming after it was a sorry falling-off. I left.
Nietzsche regarded the music by Federico Chueca (1846–1908) and Joaquín Valverde (1846–1910), and the libretto by Felipe Pérez y González (1854–1910) as among the finest operatic achievements of the nineteenth century. The grace and popular cheerfulness of the so-called revista madrileña cómico-lírica, fantástico-callejera (Madrid comic-lyric fantastic-streetwise revue) conformed both to his theory of vitalism and his radical ideas on mankind. Nietzsche's words speak of a time in which the Spanish musical theatre was thriving and securing a place within the wider European operatic repertoire. In the twenty-first century, with no new zarzuelas premiered for over fifty years, there might be a case to be made that the genre has effectively exhausted its own creative means and now remains a historical relic.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
