Género chico (literally, "little genre") is a Spanish genre of short, light plays with music. It is a major branch of zarzuela, Spain's form of popular music theatre with dialogue, and differs from zarzuela grande and most other operatic forms both in its brevity and by being aimed at audiences of a wide social spectrum.
Origin and development
Historical context
Zarzuela was developed during the reign of Philip IV (1605–1665, reigned from 1621), who during the 1640s began to commission musico-theatrical entertainments on mythological themes mixed with popular peasant song and dance, from the writer Calderón de la Barca working with composers such as Juan de Hidalgo. These were performed at the Royal hunting lodge, the Palacio de la Zarzuela. During the next two hundred years, zarzuela, as these mixed entertainments swiftly became known, became the native-language alternative to the Italian operatic form nurtured by successive monarchs.
In the 19th century, the country's tense political circumstances affected zarzuela. Isabella II fell from power during the liberal revolution of 1868, and the country found itself submerged in a crisis at all levels: economic, political, and ideological (with various strands of socialism coming to prominence). Instability increased with the 1870 assassination of Juan Prim, President of the regency council and Marshal of Spain. For economic and other reasons, there was a sharp drop in theatre box-office sales, as most people could not afford the average fourteen reales for non-necessities. Such high prices, plus the national uncertainty, brought most Madrid theatres into crisis, and many - including the Teatro de la Zarzuela itself - came close to ruin.
The beginning
Against this trend, Juan José Luján, Antonio Riquelme and José Vallés, three actors, had the idea of splitting the afternoon at the theatre into four parts of one hour each, creating the so-called sesiones por horas, or "performances by the hour", which cost barely a real, and were given in down-market theatres. This kept the seats filled, since people came more often, due to low prices. Managers accepted the idea, needing customers.
They wanted to repeat the success of teatro cómico, an earlier phenomenon that copied Offenbach's comic model, and was brought by the theatre manager Arderíus to the Madrid Variety Theatre (with his own El Joven Telémaco — "Young Telemachus" — as the main draw). The comedic model for these featured zany, unpredictable plots based on myths, tending towards caricature and mockery of various topics such as royalty, the Army, and politics. They do so with pleasant, catchy music with a certain popular, erotic tone. Comic operas of this sort were nevertheless quickly eclipsed by the expansion of the género chico and became less popular after the mid-1870s.
Because of the need for short operetta-like works that could fit into one hour, the first performances were of old plays that were already popular, such as El Maestro de baile ("The Dancing Master", by Luis Misón, and predating the género chico by many years), or plays like Una vieja ("An Old Woman", Joaquín Gaztambide) and El grumete ("The Cabin Boy", Emilio Arrieta). These plays had originally been considered secondary and were programmed as such, beside larger, more important zarzuelas, but with a change of taste and the tendency towards nationalism and German opera, the Italian taste copied by the zarzuelas would fall out of fashion, whilst the character of these little plays shone for itself. With time, new short plays were written for this short format and jolly style, notably influenced by the comic genre (with suggestive titles such as La hoja de parra ("The Fig Leaf") or Dice el sexto mandamiento ("According to the Sixth Commandment").
It is easy to see that the goal of género chico is purely to entertain the audience. Unlike the serious, dramatic themes and complicated plots in zarzuela mayor, this genre presented simplified farces about everyday topics such as daily life in Madrid. This is why it was so successful with the public: apart from the low price, people could easily follow the plot and identify with the characters.
Development
The decade of the 1870s saw the genre consolidate itself, with numerous authors publishing, for example Miguel Nieto and his El Gorro Frigio ("The Phrygian Cap"), and Fernández Caballero's Château Margaux. The genre was now centred on a model similar to that of contemporary realist literature, mainly with the musical form of lyrical one-act farces.