The SGAE Archive has announced its identification of the orchestral autograph of La generosa, one of Tomás Bretón’s least-known zarzuelas. The discovery occurred during the Archive’s cataloguing review process and systematic digitization, when an untitled score appeared that failed to correspond with the work under whose catalogue reference it had been preserved. Subsequent research confirmed that this score was the manuscript of La generosa, premiered – as we have now been able to confirm – at Madrid’s Teatro Eldorado on August 5, 1902. Better still, the zarzuela’s literary source has been identified: the one-act comedy Pajarita de las nieves by Gabriel Merino, to which six numbers of splendid music had been added. The detailed news report can be read on SGAE’s website.

Hypothesis for a disappearance

Beyond the documentary find, the work’s chronology raises intriguing questions that may well be of interest to zarzuela lovers.

Merino’s comedy Pajarita de las nieves appeared at Madrid’s Teatro Lara in May 1900, and was greeted as a small género chico gem without music. It is easy to imagine Bretón attending a performance: the piece already contained one obviously musical situation – a serenade – and offered a plot perfectly adaptable to the one-act zarzuela format.

However, there is another, even more significant fact. The autograph draft of La generosa (also preserved by SGAE) is dated April 6, 1901. In other words, the score was conceived more than a year before its premiere, which took place in August 1902. Given Madrid’s teatro por horas (‘theatre-by-the-hour’) production system, where pieces were composed with a view to immediate staging, this gap is anomalous. Everything suggests that the zarzuela was designed for another theatre or company, and that – for reasons unknown today – its planned premiere did not materialise.

The sequence of events reinforces this hypothesis. Between 1901 and 1902, just as his institutional position was consolidated by his appointment as Director of the Madrid Conservatory, Bretón endured several, very different stage failures: the three-act ‘zarzuelón’ (operatic zarzuela) Covadonga, a lyrical sainete in partnership with Ricardo de la Vega called El caballo del señorito, and the opera Farinelli. From that moment on, he distanced himself from lyric theatre for a period of five years, while progressively orienting his activity towards orchestral music.

So when La generosa finally saw the light of day at the Eldorado, the composer’s artistic profile was very different from that of the previous April. It emerged during a summer season, and on a circuit where lighter formulas predominated, close to revue or the budding ínfimo zarzuela style. In such an environment, a zarzuela with a rural setting which focused on the moral play of sentimental misunderstandings could hardly aspire to enjoy the triumphs of La verbena de la Paloma or La Dolores, the two works against which all Bretón’s later creations were inevitably compared. Yet despite everything – and thanks to some handwritten notes in the preserved scores – we know that La generosa made enough impression to be revived at Teatro Mayo in Buenos Aires during October 1902.

But how does La generosa sound?

The action takes place in a farm courtyard, at dusk, where Saturnino prepares for the arrival of his brother and his family from Madrid. The work opens with a brief orchestral introduction that segues into an offstage chorus of reapers. It is a bucolic and collective opening, placing the spectator in an idealized rural world. Now Perico (the lover of Saturnino’s daughter Anita) appears and leads a brindisi-style number in festive style and ternary, lightly-marked rhythm. Then comes the real dramatic heart of the first scene: Anita’s brilliant salida (entry number). In ternary time, much like a waltz, the young woman introduces herself with self-confidence while her father and suitor add their own comments. The number culminates in a spirited zapateado conveyed in lively music. Then we learn of a conflict clearly delineated in the duet for Anita and Perico: he is torn between jealousy and love, while she claims her independence, in a number which includes a central bolero of markedly ‘Spanish’ flavour.

The arrival of the city relatives – rigid and sanctimonious, scandalized by Anita’s easy self-confidence – introduces the work’s ideological contrast. As they go to their rest, they are serenaded in a pasodoble (played by the rondalla band) that is first heard offstage but builds to a resounding jota sung by the male chorus, with Perico and Saturnino. But the night brings complications: the prudish cousin Lucía is having a secret affair with Ricardo, who has followed her from Madrid and who jumps the wall to liaise with her. The generous and loyal Anita tries to hide this and avoid scandal, and Bretón’s orchestral ‘Nocturne’ which accompanies the scene deploys very delicate instrumentation, full of nuances – until Perico’s shot (he thinks he has surprised a thief) violently breaks the atmosphere.

Then comes the denouement, as the family believes that the man hidden in the house is compromising Anita. Everything points to a dishonour that seems to confirm their prejudices against the girl’s frank and free character. The music captures the moment in a brief but effective concertante, heir to the great Italian operatic convention of quadro di stupore. But truth will out: Ricardo was there for Lucía, not Anita. All misunderstanding vanishes and the heroine is vindicated. But there is another twist in store: Anita decides to reject Perico, shown up to be unreasonably jealous, and prefers to preserve her freedom rather than submit to possessive love. As usual in género chico, the curtain falls after a brief instrumental number reprising the catchy jota, closing in a luminous and festive key a score that combines popular brilliance, orchestral refinement and solid operatic technique in the service of a comedy where music sustains and dignifies its ‘generous’ protagonist.

© Enrique Mejías García and zarzuela.net, 2026

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5/III/2026