La villana by Vives, From (2017/2017), Directed by Natalia Menéndez,, Conductor Miguel A. Gomez-Martinez, Eduardo Portal, Teatro de la Zarzuela, Madrid, Spain

Zarzuela basada en el drama sobre la honra villana "Peribáñez y el Comendador de Ocaña", de Lope de Vega. Despite the fact that it is now more than thirty years since La villana (The village girl) last “visited” the Teatro de la Zarzuela stage, through most of the twentieth century this was one of the theatre’s most iconic works. Now, for the first time this century, and after that gap of more than three decades, the work is back on these historic boards, and something that without a doubt should be seen as an event of the first magnitude is taking place. The coming together of this famous work’s three authors, the writers Federico Romero and Guillermo Fernández Shaw, and the composer Amadeo Vives, is an example of the very best of its time – as came to be evident again later with La rosa del azafrán. La villana, as offered here, makes an unbroken aesthetic trip through the centuries, swept along by the music of Vives, in which he combines tradition, popular elements, and highly crafted melody with impressive balance. The prevalence of joy is one of the features that define his composition. And riding on the back of these luminous melodies, the visual feast on stage sits perfectly.