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Zarzuela is a Spanish lyric-dramatic genre that alternates between spoken and sung scenes, the latter incorporating operatic and popular songs, as well as dance. The etymology of the name is uncertain, but some propose it may derive from the name of a royal hunting lodge, the Palace of Zarzuela, near Madrid, where that type of entertainment was allegedly first presented to the court. The palace in turn was named after the brambles that grew there.
Santiago de Cuba is the second-largest city in Cuba and the capital city of Santiago de Cuba Province. It lies in the southeastern area of the island, some 870 km (540 mi) southeast of the Cuban capital of Havana.
The music of Cuba, including its instruments, performance, and dance, comprises a large set of unique traditions influenced mostly by west African and European music. Due to the syncretic nature of most of its genres, Cuban music is often considered one of the richest and most influential regional music in the world. For instance, the son cubano merges an adapted Spanish guitar (tres), melody, harmony, and lyrical traditions with Afro-Cuban percussion and rhythms. Almost nothing remains of the original native traditions, since the native population was exterminated in the 16th century.
Bolero is a genre of song which originated in eastern Cuba in the late 19th century as part of the trova tradition. Unrelated to the older Spanish dance of the same name, bolero is characterized by sophisticated lyrics dealing with love. It has been called the "quintessential Latin American romantic song of the twentieth century".
Guajira[ɡwaˈxi.ɾa] is a music genre derived from the punto cubano. According to some specialists, the punto cubano was known in Spain since the 18th century, where it was called "punto de La Habana", and by the second half of the 19th century it was adopted by the incipient Spanish Flamenco style, which included it within its "palos" with the name of guajira. Guajira was utilized by Spanish Zarzuela composers, such as Ruperto Chapí, who included it in his well known play "La Revoltosa", from 1897. Two years later, in 1899, the Cuban composer Jorge Anckermann inaugurated a new genre with his song "El arroyo que murmura", the first Cuban guajira. This song became a model that was adopted by many other Cuban composers at a later time, and was frequently included in the Cuban Zarzuela and vernacular theater.
Afro-Cubans or Black Cubans are Cubans of sub-Saharan African ancestry. The term Afro-Cuban can also refer to historical or cultural elements in Cuba thought to emanate from this community and the combining of native African and other cultural elements found in Cuban society such as race, religion, music, language, the arts and class culture.
Género chico 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.
Contradanza is the Spanish and Spanish-American version of the contradanse, which was an internationally popular style of music and dance in the 18th century, derived from the English country dance and adopted at the court of France. Contradanza was brought to America and there took on folkloric forms that still exist in Bolivia, Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Panama and Ecuador.
"Quiéreme mucho" is a criolla-bolero composed in 1911 by Gonzalo Roig with lyrics by Ramón Gollury and Agustín Rodríguez. The song was inspired by Roig's wife, Blanca Becerra, and premiered in Havana in 1911 without much success. In 1917, it was included in the sainete El servicio militar obligatorio and performed by Becerra and Rafael Llorens to critical acclaim. Roig published and sold the rights to the song in 1921, and the first recording was made in the United States by singer Tito Schipa in 1923. The English version, "Yours", was published in 1931 in the United States. It featured lyrics in English written by Albert Gamse and Jack Sherr. Both versions have been extensively recorded and arranged by different musicians, becoming Latin music standards.
Gerónimo Giménez y Bellido was a Spanish conductor and composer, who dedicated his career to writing zarzuelas, such as La tempranica and La boda de Luis Alonso. He preferred to spell his first name with a "G", even though his name at birth officially began with a "J".
Rita Aurelia Fulcida Montaner y Facenda, known as Rita Montaner, was a Cuban singer, pianist and actress. In Cuban parlance, she was a vedette, and was well known in Mexico City, Paris, Miami and New York, where she performed, filmed and recorded on numerous occasions. She was one of Cuba's most popular artists between the late 1920s and 1950s, renowned as Rita de Cuba. Though classically trained as a soprano for zarzuelas, her mark was made as a singer of Afro-Cuban salon songs including "The Peanut Vendor" and "Siboney".
Cuban musical theatre has its own distinctive style and history. From the 18th century to modern times, popular theatrical performances included music and often dance as well. Many composers and musicians had their careers launched in the theatres, and many compositions got their first airing on the stage. In addition to staging some European operas and operettas, Cuban composers gradually developed ideas which better suited their creole audience. Characters on stages began to include elements from Cuban life, and the music began to reflect a fusion between African and European contributions.
Manuel Penella Moreno was a Spanish composer. His father was the composer Manuel Penella Raga. His daughter Magdalena Penella Silva married the politician Ramón Ruiz Alonso; through her, he was the grandfather of actresses Emma Penella, Elisa Montés and Terele Pávez.
Rodrigo Prats was a Cuban composer, arranger, violinist, pianist and orchestral director.
Cuban culture encompasses a wide range of dance forms. The island's indigenous people performed rituals known as areíto, which included dancing, although little information is known about such ceremonies. After the colonization of Cuba by the Spanish Kingdom, European dance forms were introduced such as the French contredanse, which gave rise to the Cuban contradanza. Contradanza itself spawned a series of ballroom dances between the 19th and 20th centuries, including the danzón, mambo and cha-cha-cha. Rural dances of European origin, such as the zapateo and styles associated with punto guajiro also became established by the 19th century, and in the 20th century son became very popular. In addition, numerous dance traditions were brought by black slaves from West Africa and the Congo basin, giving rise to religious dances such as Santería, yuka and abakuá, as well as secular forms such as rumba. Many of these dance elements from European dance and religious dances were fused together to form the basis of la técnica cubana. Cuban music also contributed to the emergence of Latin dance styles in the United States, namely rhumba and salsa.
María Rodrigo was a Spanish pianist and composer. She was the daughter of Pantaléon Rodrigo, and studied music at the Madrid Conservatorium under José Tragó for piano, Valentín Arín for harmony and Emilio Serrano for composition. Maria was the first woman to have her opera performed in Spain. Her sister Mercedes Rodrigo was equally intelligent, being the first woman from Spain to obtain a degree in psychology from the Rousseau Institute in Geneva. The two left Spain for Switzerland during the Spanish Civil War, moved in 1939 to Bogota, Colombia, at the invitation of rector Agustín Nieto Caballero, and in 1950 to Puerto Rico at the invitation of José María García Madrid. With Pablo Casals, Rodrigo founded the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music. She died in Puerto Rico in 1967. Maria was one of the few composers that addressed the composition of zarzuelas, a genre of Spanish music.
Josep Ribas (1882–1934) was a Catalan composer.
Opera has been present in Cuba since the latest part of the 18th century, when the first full-fledged theater, called Coliseo, was built. Since then to present times, the Cuban people have highly enjoyed opera, and many Cuban composers have cultivated the operatic genre, sometimes with great success at an international level.
References
- ↑ Carpentier, A.; Brennan, T. (2001). Music in Cuba. Cultural studies of the Americas. University of Minnesota Press. p. 232. ISBN 978-0-8166-3230-5 . Retrieved 16 May 2023.
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