Género chico

Género chico (literally, "little genre") is a Spanish genre of short, light plays with music. It is a major branch of zarzuela, Spain's form of popular music theatre with dialogue, and differs from zarzuela grande and most other operatic forms both in its brevity and by being aimed at audiences of a wide social spectrum.

Zarzuela was developed during the reign of Philip IV (1605–1665, reigned from 1621), who during the 1640s began to commission musico-theatrical entertainments on mythological themes mixed with popular peasant song and dance, from the writer Calderón de la Barca working with composers such as Juan de Hidalgo. These were performed at the Royal hunting lodge, the Palacio de la Zarzuela. During the next two hundred years, zarzuela, as these mixed entertainments swiftly became known, became the native-language alternative to the Italian operatic form nurtured by successive monarchs.

In the 19th century, the country's tense political circumstances affected zarzuela. Isabella II fell from power during the liberal revolution of 1868, and the country found itself submerged in a crisis at all levels: economic, political, and ideological (with various strands of socialism coming to prominence). Instability increased with the 1870 assassination of Juan Prim, President of the regency council and Marshal of Spain. For economic and other reasons, there was a sharp drop in theatre box-office sales, as most people could not afford the average fourteen reales for non-necessities. Such high prices, plus the national uncertainty, brought most Madrid theatres into crisis, and many - including the Teatro de la Zarzuela itself - came close to ruin.

Against this trend, Juan José Luján, Antonio Riquelme and José Vallés, three actors, had the idea of splitting the afternoon at the theatre into four parts of one hour each, creating the so-called sesiones por horas, or "performances by the hour", which cost barely a real, and were given in down-market theatres. This kept the seats filled, since people came more often, due to low prices. Managers accepted the idea, needing customers.

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