Francisco Asenjo Barbieri (3 August 1823 – 17 or 19 February 1894) was a well-known composer of the popular Spanish opera form, zarzuela

Zarzuela

Zarzuela is a Spanish lyric-dramatic genre that alternates between spoken and sung scenes, the latter incorporating operatic and popular song, as well as dance...

. His works include: El barberillo de Lavapiés, Jugar con fuego, Pan y toros, Don Quijote, Los diamantes de la corona, and El Diablo en el poder.

He was born and died in Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

, appropriately, since the themes are characters of his operas are often distinctly Spanish and Madrileñan. Among the characters featured by Barbieri are bullfighters, manolos and manolas, and even (in Pan y toros) the famous Spanish painter, Francisco Goya

Francisco Goya

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker regarded both as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns. Goya was a court painter to the Spanish Crown, and through his works was both a commentator on and chronicler of his era...

.

The character of much of Barbieri’s work is farcical

Farce

In theatre, a farce is a comedy which aims at entertaining the audience by means of unlikely, extravagant, and improbable situations, disguise and mistaken identity, verbal humour of varying degrees of sophistication, which may include word play, and a fast-paced plot whose speed usually increases,...

, utilizing mistaken identity and other devices to entertain the audience. His themes deal largely with the ins and outs of love, and the relations between the upper and lower classes in nineteenth-century Spain, but there is also a distinct political character to much of his work. The zarzuelas Barberillo and Pan both contain plots to overthrow the government.

In addition to his compositions, Barbieri was also an accomplished musician. He was the founder of La España Musical (a society for the promotion of Spanish operetta

Operetta

Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...

) and the Society for Orchestral Music.

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