Joaquín "Quinito" Valverde Sanjuán |
This page is © Christopher Webber, Blackheath, London, UK. Last updated September 3rd 2008 |
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Son of Joaquín Valverde, Joaquín Junior - known as "Quinito" was born in Madrid on 2 January 1875. He studied under his father and at the Madrid Conservatory, writing his first zarzuela Con las de Caín (1890) when only fifteen, to a libretto later set by Sorozábal. This was the first of over two hundred género chico zarzuelas and revistas (revues) in which he had a hand. A few of these, such as La mulata and La galerna, he wrote alone. Others were with his father, but the best of them - beginning with
Los puritanos in 1894 - were with Torregrosa. El pobre diablo (1897), written to
a text by Celso Lucio, is a modern madrileño revue, where
the Seven Deadly Sins are bad enough to even shock the devil - shades of Ben
Jonson's The Devil is an Ass. El primer reserva (1897) and,
amongst later collaborations, the short humorada
cómico-lírica El pobre Valbuena (1904), both again
with Torregrosa, proved as popular. The charming score for
Los chicos de la escuela (texts by Carlos Arniches and José Jackson
Veyán), written in 1903 as a parody of a Children's
Company show, in collaboration with with the same composer, has recently been
successfully recorded. **See also El pudín negro de Stornoway (December 28th 1904), "by Torregrosa and Quinito Valverde, to a libretto by Carlos Arniches"** [Back to top of page] |