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Organization

Singer

Tenor

Alejandro Roy

Rafael

Conductor

Ramón Tebar

Stage director

José Carlos Plaza

Set designer

Francisco Leal

Costume designer

Pedro Moreno

Lighting designer

Choreographer

Cristina Hoyos

Directora asistente

Lara Diloy

Directora del coro de niños

Chorus master

Antonio Fauró

Soprano

Nicola Beller Carbone

Solea

Teatro Lírico Nacional de la Zarzuela

Others

Coro del Teatro de La Zarzuela

Orchestra

Joven Orquesta y Coro de la Comunidad de Madrid

El gato montés -  (The Wild Cat)

Madrid

Spain

Teatro de la Zarzuela

El gato montés Penella

Public

The Wild Cat

Approved

I t’s the 100th anniversary of The Wild Cat! An ambitious work showing Penella putting his weight behind popular Spanish opera. Its universally renowned pasodoble, which so many bullfighters use as a signature tune for their opening procession into the bullring, almost obscures the existence of what is not an operetta, nor a zarzuela, nor an opera in zarzuela style as those who do not know the work well often call it (or describe it in writing), but instead the maestro’s masterpiece.
Penella took his work on a tour of Spain and America – from Argentina to the United States, with considerable success; many years later this same theatre would tour with the work with Maestro Miguel Roa and the tenor Plácido Domingo topping the bill. And now what is undoubtedly one of our great Spanish tragedies returns to this stage.
This production of The Wild Cat is a dramatic and aesthetic synthesis, which pitches itself within the style known as Spanish Tenebrism, and which takes the dramatic text to its logical conclusion. The music, inspired and stylish, weaves soaring melodies throughout the three acts and five scenes. The text relates the fatal rivalry between a highly successful bullfighter, the “Macarena Dreamboat”, and a brigand on the run from the law, the “Wild Cat”, over a gipsy girl, Soleá. She loves the brigand she has grown up with, but also feels very close to the bullfighter who has taken her in. This most Spanish of lyric works, now cleansed of any nineteenth century gipsy stereotyping, has great emotional impact. Here then is our Spanish fantasy, clad in great melodic opulence.

English

The Wild Cat by Penella, From (2017/2017), Directed by José Carlos Plaza,, Conductor Ramón Tebar, Teatro de la Zarzuela, Madrid, Spain

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