Oh, oh, oh, oh, o, ho

We were talking to some Americans - North Americans, from the United States. We were in the Gods, the gallinero or chicken coop in Spanish, at the top of the Teatro Principal in Alicante. We were high enough to consider breathing apparatus. The seats were so steeply raked that Maggie worried about plummeting.  It was absolutely roasting presumably because the people in the stalls were at just the right temperature. Heat rises, rich people comfy, poor people sweltering. First I took off my jacket and then I took off my pullover to reveal my Gas Monkey T-shirt. That was the talking point to begin the conversation. All four of us were there to see a zarzuela. Say it like Thar thway la.

Have you ever seen a zarzuela before asked the Americans, "Yes," I said, "No," said Maggie. In a way we were both right. We've seen several scenes from various zarzuelas in full costume and three concerts of zarzuela music. It was the first time though that we'd seen a full production.

The production was La revoltosa, the Troublemaker, set in 19th Century Madrid and written by Ruperto Chapí, a local lad done good. He's considered to be one of the foremost composers of zarzuelas. The Revoltosa features poor folk, poor but happy folk. Lots of singing and dancing and chatting up of sultry maidens. Zarzuela is the name of a Royal Palace on the outskirts of Madrid.  The building is supposedly named for the blackberry bushes, zarzas, that surrounded it and where, so the tale has it, zarzuelas were first performed.

If anybody asks me, and as you may imagine it's a common question, I always say that zarzuelas are light opera - I think Merry Widow and Gilbert and Sullivan. The Spanish Wikipedia entry is very scathing about comparisons with other operatic forms. It pooh poohs the idea that zarzuelas are anything like the French Opereta and says it's more like the German Singspiel but that really it is a uniquely Hispanic form. Interesting eh? No, I didn't think so either. The English Wikipedia entry says that 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. And that will do for me.

It wasn't as good as I'd hoped. I quite like the zarzuela style music but as a live performance it was a bit gutless. We didn't understand most of the spoken parts - Maggie said it was because we were so far away, I think it's because our Spanish is terrible. On the other hand, as an experience, I thought it was pretty cracking. Maggie didn't. She said that the heroine warbled like Gracie Fields. The Americans said it was good too but that may have been because they were tourists.

Oh, and being old and nearly senile I managed to scrape the side of my new motor as I reversed out of the underground car park. Nothing significant really but enough to make me swear like a trooper all the way home.