Spanish opera

Spanish opera is both the art of opera in Spain and opera in the Spanish language. Opera has existed in Spain since the mid 17th century.

Opera was slow to develop within Spain in comparison to France, Italy, and to a lesser extent Germany which have had continuous traditions of opera since the early part of the 17th century. One of the reasons for this slow development was the existence of a strong tradition of spoken drama in Spain which made some critics believe that opera was a less worthy artform. However, there was a tradition of songs given within largely spoken plays which began in the early 16th century by such distinguished composers as Juan del Encina.

The earliest Spanish operas appeared in the mid 17th century with libretti by such famous writers as Calderón de la Barca and Lope de Vega to music by such composers as Juan Hidalgo de Polanco. These early operas, however, failed to catch the imagination of the Spanish public. It was not until the increasing popularity of such genres as ballad opera and opéra comique that opera in Spain started to gain momentum, since the use of speech in the vernacular inevitably encouraged Spanish composers to develop their own national style of opera: zarzuela.

Zarzuela is characterized by a mixture of sung and spoken dialogue. Although Juan Hidalgo de Polanco's early forays into opera were more along the lines of Italian opera, he was instrumental in helping to create the art form, composing the first known zarzuela, El laurel de Apolo, in 1657. The courtly Baroque zarzuela, a mixture of sophisticated verse drama, allegorical opera, popular song, and dance, became the fashion of the Spanish court for over the next 100 years.

The opera artform flourished in Spain during the eighteenth century with two excellent composers, Sebastián Durón and Antonio Literes. Literes' opera Accis y Galatea (1708) was particularly popular. Also of note later in the century was Rodrígues de Hita (c.1724–87) who used guitars, mandolins, tambourines, and castanets and incorporated spectacular dancing into his opera Las labradoras de Murcia (1769). The zarzuela (in this sense) was eventually superseded by a yet simpler entertainment, the tonadilla escénica (usually a down-to-earth story of everyday folk), but this too became increasingly sophisticated. Eventually the popularity of zarzuela waned at the end of the 18th century, with the last known zarzuela of the century, Clementina by Luigi Boccherini, premiering in 1786. For over the next sixty years Italian opera became the predominantly popular form of opera in Spain.

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