Zarzuela: Music Theater and Nationalism in Spain

Historias: The Spanish History Podcast

Spain’s own genre of music theater, zarzuela, is one of the country’s most distinctive cultural forms. In this episode, Prof. Clinton Young traces the evolution of the genre in the context of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Spanish history, linking it to the development of the urban middle and working classes. We will listen to selections from several famous zarzuelas along the way, with Young analyzing how zarzuela contributed to Spain’s unique bottom-up nationalization process. Please see the episode webpage for a list of the selections.