 Manuel
Penella (1880 - 1939) |
Manuel Penella Morena was born in Valencia on 31st July
1880, son of the composer and director of the city conservatory Manuel
Penella Raga. Young Manuel soon began composition studies there under
Salvador Giner, presiding spirit of the city's vibrant musical life.
Penella showed at least equal promise as a violinist, and had it not been for
an accident to his left hand would perhaps have chosen to become a concert
virtuoso rather than a composer. After graduation, he worked locally as
a church organist, but soon succumbed to the lure of theatre, producing the
first of over 80 stage works with the zarzuela La fiesta del pueblo in
1894. A compulsive traveller, he spent much of his working life with zarzuela
and opera companies abroad, notably in Latin America, Cuba, the United States,
and Mexico - he even spent time as director of the military band in Quito,
Ecuador. His first notable success - the revista Las musas
latinas (1912) was typical in that it proved more popular outside Spain.
Revistas, zarzuelas, operettas and operas flowed easily fom him, and his best
known work is El gato montes ('The Wildcat', Valencia 1916) a popular
opera in red-blooded Spanish verismo style, the well-muscled
Pasodoble from which is still invariably played in the corrida.
The popularity of El gato montes extended to New York, where Penella
conducted a sold-out run of ten weeks, at the Park Theatre in 1920, and this
strong if unsubtle score has been lovingly revived and lavishly recorded by
Plácido Domingo in recent years. His greatest and most
lasting musical triumph came in Barcelona, with Don Gil de Alcalá (1932), another
through-written work, tastefully scored for a string chamber orchestra. This
lovely work transcends its apparent limitation as a light pastiche of 18th
century musical manners, and possesses a haunting beauty not quite like
anything else in the repertoire.
He planned to settle in Barcelona,
where some of his later works such as the revista Jazz Band (1933) and
the late zarzuela La malquerida (1935) achieved some success, without matching
the musical quality of Don Gil. But soon enough he left Spain for
another extended tour, and it was whilst supervising the music for a film of
Don Gil that Penella died suddenly, in Cuernavaca, Mexico on 24th
January 1939. One result of his compulsive globe-trotting was that
Penella's name became better known outside Spain than those of his more
musically distinctive contemporaries. Viewed by some as a solitary, even
austere figure, he certainly stands alone in one respect as a zarzuelero
- for from El gato montes onwards he wrote his own libretti. A musical
chameleon, his best work has a fresh tunefulness and energy which is strongly
effective - and in Don Gil de
Alcalá at least, he produced a most subtle and individual
jewel. [Back to top of page] |