When I finished my PhD on these transnational relations between the productive and creative environment of zarzuela and operetta I was contacted by one of the most important cultural institutions in Spain, the Fundación Juan March, interested in turning my theoretical research into a concert series. What is happening, and where and with whom? Can you outline the program and describe who and how it was put together? You are planning an event series on Offenbach in Spain next week. Jacques Offenbach riding his success, a caricature from a Paris newspaper. In total, forty-two of his operettas were adapted into Spanish and represented on an equal footing alongside the most exhilarating titles of Fernandez Caballero, Chapí… Lecocq or Suppé.

Since then, sixty-eight ‘zarzuelas’ were created with music by Offenbach, including several pasticcios and some titles with more than one version. From 1856 several French travelling companies represented Offenbach’s titles in Madrid and Barcelona but the real craziness was unleashed in 1864 with the release at the Teatro de la Zarzuela of the first Spanish translation: Los dioses del Olimpo ( Orphée aux Enfers). Of course not! Actually Offenbach was always present in Spain since 1855 when the composer Barbieri premiered his ‘musical translation’ (as a zarzuela) of Les Deux Aveugles and preserved a musical number from Offenbach’s original score. Jacques Offenbach and Spain: is that a new topic, beyond José Carreras and Teresa Berganza singing La Périchole? From the Centro de Documentación y Archivo (CEDOA) de la SGAE.

Teen Life by D.M. Mejias