Reception of Musical Hispanism in New York at the Turn of the 20Th
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068-02/2021SEN1 ISSN 2688-2949 (online) ISSN 2688-2965 (print) Reception of Musical Hispanism in New York 1 at the Turn of the 20th Century and the ‘Boom’ in Spanish Lyric Theatre through the work of Enrique Granados and Quinito Valverde Miriam Perandones Lozano Universidad de Oviedo Abstract: This study offers a broad overview of the Spanish musicians who traveled to the United States in the early 20th century, and, more specifically, describes the reception of Spanish opera and zarzuela on the East Coast of the U.S. at that time. It reviews the studies on the reception of Hispanic music in North America from the 19th century onward and contextualizes the debuts of Enrique Granados’s opera Goyescas (1916) and Quinito Valverde’s zarzuela The Land of Joy (1917), as these two works, whose New York debuts took place only twenty-one months apart, played a key role in developing a taste for Hispanic lyric theatre in the U.S. Granados’s opera is associated with prestige and the cultural elite, and it presented a modern image of Spain linked to the so-called Generation of ’98, whereas Valverde’s zarzuela is a light, accessible, easy-to-digest revue built on Spanish stereotypes. These debuts marked the definitive establishment of a lyric theatre in New York City that was Spanish in both language and themes. Keywords: Hispanic music, zarzuela, reception, Enrique Granados, Goyescas, Quinito Valverde, The Land of Joy 1 [Editors’ note: This is an English translation, offered by the Observatorio, of the Spanish original submitted by the author. See study 068-02/2021SP.] © Miriam Perandones Lozano Reception of Musical Hispanism in New York at the Turn of the 20th Century and the “Boom” in Spanish Lyric Theatre through the work of Enrique Granados and Quinito Valverde Estudios del Observatorio/Observatorio Studies. 068-02/2021EN ISSN: 2688-2949 (online) 2688-2965 (print) doi: 10.15427/OR068-02/2021EN Instituto Cervantes at FAS - Harvard University © Instituto Cervantes at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University 2 © Miriam Perandones Lozano Reception of Musical Hispanism in New York at the Turn of the 20th Century and the “Boom” in Spanish Lyric Theatre through the work of Enrique Granados and Quinito Valverde Estudios del Observatorio/Observatorio Studies. 068-02/2021EN ISSN: 2688-2949 (online) 2688-2965 (print) doi: 10.15427/OR068-02/2021EN Instituto Cervantes at FAS - Harvard University © Instituto Cervantes at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University 1. Introduction During the rehearsal and debut of Enrique Granados’s opera Goyescas at the New York Metropolitan Opera, the composer and his wife, Amparo Gal, wrote letters to their children in which they remarked on the number of Spaniards living in the city between December of 1915 and March of 1916, including María Gay, Miguel Llobet, Paquita Madriguera, and Rosa Nin. Although this circumstance is well known in musicology circles, no scholar has ever investigated what these Spaniards were doing in New York City, how long they had been there, how long they stayed, whether they succeeded there, or whether they were welcomed by a network of countrymen. It is also well known in the academic community that Goyescas did not enjoy positive critical reception in the U.S.; in fact, the libretto was found especially unappealing. 3 The production closed after five performances, with no subsequent revivals. Nevertheless, in 1915, Granados was received and welcomed with such enthusiasm that he became a leading media figure. Why did this happen? Granados was not an operatic composer with a particularly established or renowned career. Is it possible that Spanish music itself held prestige in the country? What do we really know about the reception of Spanish music in the U.S.? Studies on Spaniards and Spanish music abroad in the 19th and 20th centuries have tended to focus on Europe—particularly on Paris, as the cultural hub par excellence—and on certain Latin American countries, but in recent years, they have turned to North America. After the research by Víctor Sánchez and Matilde Olarte,2 Virginia Sánchez published a study on the soprano María Barrientos;3 in 2 Olarte, M. (2009) “El ciclo vital musical en imágenes fotográficas: Kurt Schindler y Ruth Anderson como informantes de la actividad musical en la España rural de los años 20”, Revista de Musicología, 32(2), 105-116. The researcher has written on this topic elsewhere, including in “Las anotaciones de campo de Kurt Schindler durante sus grabaciones en España,” Etnofolk. Revista de Etnomusicología, 16-17 (2010), 35-74; and “Apuntes © Miriam Perandones Lozano Reception of Musical Hispanism in New York at the Turn of the 20th Century and the “Boom” in Spanish Lyric Theatre through the work of Enrique Granados and Quinito Valverde Estudios del Observatorio/Observatorio Studies. 068-02/2021EN ISSN: 2688-2949 (online) 2688-2965 (print) doi: 10.15427/OR068-02/2021EN Instituto Cervantes at FAS - Harvard University © Instituto Cervantes at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University 2016, José Manuel Gamboa published the first volume of ¡En er mundo!: de cómo Nueva York le mangó a París la idea moderna del flamenco;4 and Kiko Mora has written several texts, independently and with others, on Spanish or Hispanic-inspired recordings by U.S. record labels and how certain dancers influenced the reception of Spanish popular music.5 Granados (Lérida, 1867 – Canal de la Mancha, 1916) did not achieve success with Goyescas, but this did not prevent the composer from becoming a fashionable figure during his stay in New York, at which time he cultivated the city’s fondness for all things Spanish, as is clear from the era’s news coverage. The great Spanish musical smash was to come the following year, in 1917, with the debut of The Land of Joy. This light zarzuela by Quinito Valverde (Madrid, 1875 – Mexico City, 1918) definitively popularized Spanish music for much of New York and East Coast society. After that, Spanish theatre, or Spanish-inspired theatre, was often staged in 4 New York, and even appeared on the silver screen in audience favorites and box- office hits thanks to Hispanic works and works that dealt with Hispanic themes. In this study, we will examine why this took place during the 1910s and 1920s, and not in earlier or subsequent decades, and we will attempt to explain why this success did not extend to Goyescas. An examination of this phenomenon in the early decades of the 20th century requires a review of the preceding decades, an analysis of how Spanish works were received, and a contextualization of Spanish music and culture in the 19th century de Sevilla a través de intrépidas jovencitas americanas de los años 30: Bienvenido Mr. Schindler,” Lo Andaluz Popular, Símbolo de lo Nacional. Granada, Editorial de la Universidad / CDMA (2009), 95-111. For Sánchez Sánchez, see bibliography. 3 Sánchez Rodríguez, V. (2018) “La Metropolitan Opera House canta con voz española: la génesis neoyorkina de la soprano María Barrientos”, Anuario Musical, 73, 275-284. 4 The first of three volumes, and the only volume consulted for this study. 5 Ortiz Nuevo, J. L.; Cruzado, Á. y Mora, K. (2016) La Valiente. Trinidad Huertas “La Cuenca”. Sevilla: Libros con Duende. See bibliography. © Miriam Perandones Lozano Reception of Musical Hispanism in New York at the Turn of the 20th Century and the “Boom” in Spanish Lyric Theatre through the work of Enrique Granados and Quinito Valverde Estudios del Observatorio/Observatorio Studies. 068-02/2021EN ISSN: 2688-2949 (online) 2688-2965 (print) doi: 10.15427/OR068-02/2021EN Instituto Cervantes at FAS - Harvard University © Instituto Cervantes at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University U.S. Despite evidence of Spanish music reaching the U.S. during the Romantic era, the fondness and esteem for Hispanic culture, and by extension Hispanic music, largely began in the 20th century. As Richard L. Kagan notes, ‘Spain mania’ became widespread following the Spanish-American War of 1898, during which it extended throughout the United States. In the realm of music, however, Hispanism only took off on the East Coast beginning in 1916, during a zarzuela and opera season. Until then, Spanish culture had a negligible presence in North American culture and entertainment. 2. Background: construction and persistence of the Spanish romantic myth Although a handful of Spanish cultural works received attention in the U.S. at specific moments in the 19th century, these were exceptional and exclusive cases not 5 indicative of a general trend. The fact is that in the U.S., Spanish culture was rarely studied, largely unknown, and not infrequently denigrated. Kagan offers a clear example: in 1891, banker Morris Ketchum Jesup argued that Spain was a dead civilization. Even years later, in the second decade of the twentieth century, the Spanish language was considered to have only commercial value, and little to no cultural merit (Fernández, 2005). Until the 20th century, France and England were the European models of good taste for the North American upper class, while Italy was the model for art and music, though Wagner forcefully upended this status quo in the 1880s. Even after the Hispanic Society of America’s successful Joaquín Sorolla exhibition in 1909 and Ignacio Zuloaga exhibition in 1916, and, especially, after the unprecedented media frenzy surrounding the debut of Granados’s Goyescas, Galician ABC journalist Julio Camba bitterly complained in February 1917 of North American society’s ignorance of Spain: “Here we have no legend, no devotees, no audience […] We were the ones who discovered America, yet the Americans have yet © Miriam Perandones Lozano Reception of Musical Hispanism in New York at the Turn of the 20th Century and the “Boom” in Spanish Lyric Theatre through the work of Enrique Granados and Quinito Valverde Estudios del Observatorio/Observatorio Studies.