La zarzuela como plataforma de negociación sociocultural transoceánica

Resumo

When the Romantic Zarzuela model was established in Spain, most of the American territories were involved in their own nation building processes after their independencies. Despite this, or precisely because of it, Spanish zarzuela occupied a seminal role both in the referred identity processes in the new American republics, through the nationalist zarzuela models that emerged in them, and in their respective sociocultural and entertainment dynamics. This way, zarzuela became a channel for discussion, acceptance and negotiation of the cultural, emotional and identity ties between Spanish-speaking America and metropolitan Spain. During the twentieth century, zarzuela played a crucial role as well for Spanish emigration in America, as a catalyst for the cultural, emotional and social life of its collectives, turning the American market into one of the essential economic centres for the viability of the genre. Beyond the Ibero-American sphere, in the United States, zarzuela was positioned as an articulating genre of the new Latin cultural identity, reinforcing the connections, real or imaginary, of the transnational communities with their European cultural roots. This way, and across two centuries, zarzuela has functioned as a transoceanic bridge for musical, cultural, commercial and social dialogue; a platform for local and global understanding, traditional and avant-garde, exotic and, at the same time, nostalgic. Zarzuela clearly illustrates the centrifugal and centripetal tensions of the Ibero-American identity; without America, the development and evolution of operatic genres in Spain cannot be understood. This study aims to analyze the differential processes of implementation and development of zarzuela models in America, their roles as articulators of local and pan-Hispanic identities, looking, with special attention, into the sociocultural dynamics associated with the genre, providing a panorama of the implantation of zarzuela in America in the XXI.