Romantico Enrique Viana (The Undending Passion of the Zarzuela)

Daniel Oyarzabal and Enrique Viana

Featuring:

Enrique Viana, tenor

Daniel Oyarzabal, piano

It was a trip down musical memory lane as the Sonidos de España, Spanish Festival at the CCP started with a concert featuring Zarzuela music at the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ Tanghalang Aurelio Tolentino (CCP Little Theater). The concert, entitled Romantico Enrique Viana (The Undending Passion of the Zarzuela), featured tenor Enrique Viana who was accompanied by pianist Daniel Oyarzabal.

All I know about the Zarzuela before was that it’s a form of live entertainment (a cross between an opera and musical theater that alternates spoken and sung scenes along with dance) originating in Spain. The Zarzuela never took off beyond Spain’s borders except in its colonies. And one such colony is the Philippines which took the Zarzuela and transformed it into the Sarswela.

During the concert, Enrique Viana not only performed songs taken from various Zarzuelas but he also gave a lot of background information regarding the pieces prior to singing making the audience appreciate the music a bit better. From his lecture, I learned that the Zarzuela dealt mostly about daily Spanish life and reflected current events at that time but sprinkled with a generous dose of the craziness and absurdity that I’ve learned to expect from such forms of live entertainment. I initially thought that Zarzuelas were set in Spain but there was one featured in the concert, Katiuska by Pablo Sorozábal, that was actually set in Russia during the time of the revolution.

Aside from Katiuska, Viana also performed excerpts from Zarzuelas such as Luisa Fernanda by Federico Moreno Torroba, Don Gil de Alcalá by Manuel Penella, Alma de Dios by José Serrano, La Tabernera del Puerto by Sorozábal, La Chulapona by Torroba and Doña Francisquita by Amadeo Vives.

I find the songs that Viana performed extremely lyrical with sweeping melodies and wide leaps challenging his tenor vocal range. I wondered how the other songs in Zarzuelas intended for other vocal ranges sounded like. It is also interesting to note that while most Zarzuela music are in the usual Spanish folk tradition like the jota and seguidilla, it also took in dances from other lands like the habanera and the mazurka. During breaks by Viana, pianist Daniel Oyarzabal performed solo pieces which I think were also picked from the Zarzuelas that were featured in the concert. For an encore, Viana sang Dahil sa Iyo by Mike Velarde, Jr. that was highly appreciated by the audience even though some were foreigners.

The show made me curious as to how an actual Zarzuela was staged. And I also wondered how different and similar the Zarzuela is to an opera and a contemporary musical. Alas, the Zarzuela has fallen out of fashion and I don’t think that any of the old works are still being staged nowadays. Seeing an actual Zarzuela is a remote possibility now, but thanks to Enrique Viana, I was still able to see a glimpse and hear a snippet of this art form.

Romantico Enrique Viana (The Undending Passion of the Zarzuela) was presented by the Cultural Center of the Philippines, the Embassy of Spain, Instituto Cervantes de Manila and Bench.