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Género chico (literally, "little genre") is a Spanish genre of short light dramas. It is a subgenre of zarzuela, the Spanish operetta. It differs from zarzuela grande and most other opera forms both by being short and by aiming at a proletarian audience. It could be considered to be in many ways the nineteenth-century Spanish equivalent of the modern televised soap opera.1 Origin and development
1.1 Historical context
Zarzuela had developed together with Spanish politics, beginning during the reign of Philip IV (1605 – 1665, reigned from 1621), who introduced the genre to soften his parties at the Palacio de la Zarzuela . During the reigns of a succession of monarchs, zarzuela, as it became known, passed through numerous highs and lows, alternating between a tendency to create a Spanish national opera and to copy the Italian form.
In the 19th century, the country's tense political circumstances affected zarzuela. Isabella II fell from power due to the liberal revolution of 1868. The country found itself submerged in a crisis at all levels: economic, political, and ideological (with various forms of socialism on the rise). People were nervous because of all the instability in the country, which increased with the 1870 assassination of Juan Prim (president of the regencyA regency is a period when a regent holds power in the name of the current monarch. The term may also refer specifically to the Regency period of the United Kingdom, often called the English Regency. The French equivalent, Regence refers to a specific per council and marshallMarshall is the name of several places in the United States of America: Marshall, Alaska Marshall, Arkansas Marshall, Illinois Marshall, Indiana Marshall, Michigan Marshall, Minnesota Marshall, Missouri Marshall, Oklahoma Marshall, North Carolina Marshall of Spain. For economic and other reasons, there was a sharp drop in box-office sales, bankrupting theatres. A good ticket was about fourteen realThe Real (plural reais) is the present monetary unit ( currency) of Brazil. History Past The "Real" was the currency used by the first Portuguese settlers to arrive in the then New World, but the first official money to circulate bearing the name "Real" wes, which the average citizen could not afford for something he or she was not even sure to enjoy. The high price, plus national uncertainty, brought most zarzuela theatres into crisis, often just avoiding bankruptcy.
1.2 The beginning
Against this trend, Juan José Luján , Antonio Riquelme and José Vallés , three actorAn actor is a person who acts, or plays a role in an artistic production. The term commonly refers to someone working in movies, television, live theatre, or radio, and can occasionally denote a street entertainer. Besides playing dramatic roles, actors ms, 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 comic theatre, an earlier phenomenon that copied OffenbachOffenbach holds many meanings. The city Offenbach in Hesse The district of Offenbach in Hesse The municipality and Verwaltungsgememeinschaft Offenbach, Rhineland-Palatinate|Offenbach]] (Queich) in the district Sudliche Weinstrasse, Rhineland-Palatinate Th's comic model, and was brought by the theatre manager Arderíus to the MadridThis article is about the Spanish capital. For other entries, see Madrid (disambiguation). Coat of arms Madrid the capital of Spain, is located in the center of the country at 40°25'N, 3°45'W. As of 2003 census, population of the city of Madrid proper was Variety Theatre (with El Joven Telémaco — "Young Telemachus" — as the main play). Comic plays were nevertheless quickly eclipsed by the expansion of the género chico and disappeared in 1873. The comic model is a short play, with a wacky, unpredictable plot, tending towards caricature and mockery of various topics, such as historical myths, royalty, the Army, politics, etc. It does so with pleasant, unremarkable music with a certain erotic and exotic tone.
Because of the need for short plays 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 Romualdo Gaztambide ) and El grumete ("The Cabin Boy", Juan Pascual Antonio 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 is was so successful with the public: apart from the low price, people could easily follow the plot and identify with the characters, making género chico the equivalent of the modern soap opera. In difficult times, people tend to escape into entertainment, so they don't have to think about the world outside.
