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Cristóbal Oudrid
(1825 - 77) |
 One of the more
flamboyant figures involved in the resuscitation of zarzuela during the middle
years of the 19th century was Cristóbal Oudrid. His grandfather,
a soldier from Estremaduran gypsy stock, fought and was killed fighting for
Napoleon at Waterloo. His father became in his turn a military bandmaster,
based in Badajoz near the Portuguese border: he it was who was largely
responsible for his son’s musical training. In 1844 Cristóbal
arrived in Madrid, taking lessons from the teacher-composer Baltasar
Saldoni, earning his living as a pianist whilst writing (according to
the critic Antonio Peña y Goni) salon pieces for that
instrument. He had his first, short stage piece, a zarzuela andaluza
entitled La venta del puerto o Juanillo el contrabandista
performed at Teatro del Príncipe in 1846. A second work, La
pradera del canal – composed in collaboration with Luis
Cepeda and Sebastián Iradier – succeeded
at Teatro de la Cruz the following year.
Over the next
few seasons he actively promoted zarzuela at Teatro del Circo, Teatro de
Variedades, and eventually – despite some rivalry and ill-feeling from
some of its leading lights – at the new Teatro de la Zarzuela, writing in
collaboration with Barbieri, Gaztambide, Rafael Hernando and
José Inzenga as well as alone. Amongst the most
successful works he wrote alone included the one-act farce Buenas noches señor Don
Simón (1852); the light comedy of aristocratic amours in
the French style, where farcical complications stem from disguises and mistaken
identities, El postillón de la Rioja (1856); El
último mono (1859) and Memorias de un
estudiante (1860) which featured a once-popular jota. He also
had a hand (with all four of the above mentioned composers) in Olona’s Por seguir
a una mujer, a major success at the Teatro del Circo in 1851; and in
Estebanillo (1855, with Gaztambide).
Conducting
– a discipline at which he excelled – gradually took up more of his
time and attention, though the one-act Bazar de novias (1867)
met with some success. His last great triumph was El molinero de
Subiza (1870, to a text by Luis de Eguílaz)
but after the failure of his magnum opus, the zarzuela grande in
three-acts Ildara (1874), he largely gave up composing in
favour of the podium. His final stage work was Blancos y
azules (1876) jointly composed with the leading light of the
“second generation”, Fernández Caballero.
His work is now
almost forgotten, though the jota taken from his incidental music for
the actor Juan Lombia’s play El sitio de
Zaragoza (The Siege of Zaragoza) remains a staple of the wind band
repertoire. What remains is the memory of a provocative, bohemian personality
who cared more for pragmatic music making than theory or technique – a
choice which may account for the fact that his once-popular body of work has
sunk almost without trace. Yet the recent revival of Buenas noches
señor Don Simón raised questions about the justice of
this. The score proved to be uncomplicated without being trivial, melodically
graceful and theatrically intelligent. Its musical personality came across as
less Italianate than that of his better-known contemporaries, intriguingly
closer in spirit to the work of the later género chico
composers. Whether this is true of his larger-scale zarzuelas remains to be
seen, but Oudrid’s music is certainly a prime candidate for modern
revaluation.
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