Cuban musical theatre
Encyclopedia
Cuban musical theatre has its own distinctive style and history. From the 18th century (at least) to modern times, popular theatrical performances included music and often dance as well. Many composers and musicians had their careers launched in the theatres, and many compositions got their first airing on the stage. In addition to staging some European operas and operettas, Cuban composers gradually developed ideas which better suited their creole audience. Characters on stages began to include elements from Cuban life, and the music began to reflect a fusion between African and European contributions.
Recorded music
was to be the couduit for Cuban music to reach the world. The most recorded artist in Cuba up to 1925 was a singer at the Alhambra, Adolfo Colombo
. Records show he recorded about 350 numbers between 1906 and 1917.
The first theatre
in Havana opened in 1775, called the Coloseo, and later the Teatro Principal. The first Cuban-composed opera
appeared in 1807. Theatrical music was hugely important in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century; its significance only began to wane with the change in political and social weather in the second part of the 20th century. Radio, which began in Cuba in 1922, helped the growth of popular music because it provided publicity and a new source of income for the artists.
, a Spanish company arrived in Havana that would perform for more than 22 years. This company had artists of serious merit. The troupe included Andrés Prieto (a famous actor), Manuel García (who played the villain), the singer María del Rosario Sabatini, Antonio Hermosilla and others. After a few months it was reinforced by more Spanish talent: Mariana Galino, Isabel Gamborino (the famous tonadilla
singer), and her sister the ballerina Manuela Gamborino, whom Carpentier describes as "an agile and luscious bombshell who had the men of Havana in a spell."
The life of some of these players was theatre itself: Marina Galino provoked her husband to jealousy, whereupon he stabbed her and left her for dead, finally slitting his own wrists. But the lady was not dead, and eventually recovered to give exhibitions of European dance styles, such as the bolero
(Spanish style), minuet
s, gavot
s polka
s, folías (Canary Islands), cachuchas (Andalusian solo song and dance), manchegas (from La Mancha), el pan de xarabe, el caballito jaleado and so on. Many of these were taught at Havana dance academies, but the contradanza
and the waltz
were the long-lasting favourites. Within twenty years of the contradanza arriving from abroad, it had begun to show signs of cubanization in its rhythm. This was the start of the fusion which eventually effected so much music and life generally in Cuba.
A Cuban actor, Francisco Covarrubias, was a prominent member of the troupe, and figured on its posters. He was a basso buffo, and an author of entremeses
(one-act farces), zarzuelas and sainete
s. As the vogue for Spanish-style theatre waned, Covarrubias led the way to genuinely Cuban theatrical formats.
format. Starting off with imported Spanish content (List of zarzuela composers), it developed into a running commentary on Cuba's social and political events and problems. Zarzuela has the distinction of providing Cuba's first recording artist: the soprano Rosalía 'Chalía' Díaz de Herrera
made, outside Cuba, the first recordings by a Cuban artist. She recorded numbers from the zarzuela Cadíz in 1898 on unnumbered Bettini
cylinders.
Zarzuela reached its peak in the first half of the 20th century. Musical director Jorge Anckermann
produced zarzuelas, reviews and comedies at the Alhambra. A string of front-rank composers such as Gonzalo Roig
, Eliseo Grenet
, Ernesto Lecuona
and Rodrigo Prats
produced hits for the Regina and Martí theatres in Havana. Great stars like the vedette Rita Montaner
, who could sing, play the piano, dance and act, were the Cuban equivalents of Mistinguett
and Josephine Baker
in Paris. Some of the best known zarzuelas are La virgen morena (Grenet), Nina Rita (Grenet and Lecuona), María la O, El batey, Rosa la China (all Lecuona); Gonzalo Roig with La Habana de noche; Rodrigo Prats with Amalia Batista and La perla del caribe; and above all, Cecilia Valdés (the musical of the most famous Cuban novel of the 19th century, with music by Roig and script by Prats and Agustín Rodríguez). Artists who were introduced to the public in the lyric theatre include Caridad Suarez, María de los Angeles Santana, Esther Borja
and Ignacio Villa, who had such a round, black face that Rita Montaner called him Bola de Nieve
('Snowball').
:
So the bufo theatre became fertile ground for that typically Cuban musical form, the guaracha.
, or the American Vaudeville
, still occur, where an audience is treated to a pot-pourri of singers, comedians, bands, sketches and speciality acts. Even in cinemas during the silent movies, singers and instrumentalists would appear in the interval, and a pianist would play during the films. Bola de Nieve and María Teresa Vera
are two stars who played in cinemas in their early days. Burlesque
was also common in Havana before 1960.
Not until after the Second World War do we find detailed printed descriptions or recordings of African sacred ceremonies in Cuba. Inside the cults, music, song, dance and ceremony were (and still are) learnt by heart by means of demonstration, including such ceremonial procedures as are conducted in an African language. The experiences were (and some still are) private to the initiated, until the work of the ethnologist Fernándo Ortíz
, who devoted a large part of his life to investigating the influence of African culture in Cuba. The first detailed transcription of percussion, song and chants are to be found in his great works.
Recorded music
Sound recording and reproduction
Sound recording and reproduction is an electrical or mechanical inscription and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound effects. The two main classes of sound recording technology are analog recording and digital recording...
was to be the couduit for Cuban music to reach the world. The most recorded artist in Cuba up to 1925 was a singer at the Alhambra, Adolfo Colombo
Adolfo Colombo
Adolfo Columbo was a leading singer in the Alhambra Theatre in Havana, and also an actor and a leading personality in the theatre...
. Records show he recorded about 350 numbers between 1906 and 1917.
The first theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
in Havana opened in 1775, called the Coloseo, and later the Teatro Principal. The first Cuban-composed opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
appeared in 1807. Theatrical music was hugely important in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century; its significance only began to wane with the change in political and social weather in the second part of the 20th century. Radio, which began in Cuba in 1922, helped the growth of popular music because it provided publicity and a new source of income for the artists.
Cuban theatre in the early 19th century
In 1810, says Alejo CarpentierAlejo Carpentier
Alejo Carpentier y Valmont was a Cuban novelist, essayist, and musicologist who greatly influenced Latin American literature during its famous "boom" period. Born in Lausanne, Switzerland, Carpentier grew up in Havana, Cuba; and despite his European birthplace, Carpentier strongly self-identified...
, a Spanish company arrived in Havana that would perform for more than 22 years. This company had artists of serious merit. The troupe included Andrés Prieto (a famous actor), Manuel García (who played the villain), the singer María del Rosario Sabatini, Antonio Hermosilla and others. After a few months it was reinforced by more Spanish talent: Mariana Galino, Isabel Gamborino (the famous tonadilla
Tonadilla
Tonadilla was a Spanish musical song form of theatrical origin; not danced. The genre was a type of short, satirical musical comedy popular in 18th-century Spain, and later in Cuba and other Spanish colonial countries. It originated as a song type, then dialogue for characters was written into the...
singer), and her sister the ballerina Manuela Gamborino, whom Carpentier describes as "an agile and luscious bombshell who had the men of Havana in a spell."
The life of some of these players was theatre itself: Marina Galino provoked her husband to jealousy, whereupon he stabbed her and left her for dead, finally slitting his own wrists. But the lady was not dead, and eventually recovered to give exhibitions of European dance styles, such as the bolero
Bolero
Bolero is a form of slow-tempo Latin music and its associated dance and song. There are Spanish and Cuban forms which are both significant and which have separate origins.The term is also used for some art music...
(Spanish style), minuet
Minuet
A minuet, also spelled menuet, is a social dance of French origin for two people, usually in 3/4 time. The word was adapted from Italian minuetto and French menuet, and may have been from French menu meaning slender, small, referring to the very small steps, or from the early 17th-century popular...
s, gavot
Gavot
Gavot can refer to:* Gavòt, a subdialect of Vivaro-Alpine Occitan.* Gavotte, a dance that exists in both folk forms and historical court forms....
s polka
Polka
The polka is a Central European dance and also a genre of dance music familiar throughout Europe and the Americas. It originated in the middle of the 19th century in Bohemia...
s, folías (Canary Islands), cachuchas (Andalusian solo song and dance), manchegas (from La Mancha), el pan de xarabe, el caballito jaleado and so on. Many of these were taught at Havana dance academies, but the contradanza
Contradanza
The Cuban contradanza was a popular dance music genre of the 19th century.- Origins and Early Development:...
and the waltz
Waltz
The waltz is a ballroom and folk dance in time, performed primarily in closed position.- History :There are several references to a sliding or gliding dance,- a waltz, from the 16th century including the representations of the printer H.S. Beheim...
were the long-lasting favourites. Within twenty years of the contradanza arriving from abroad, it had begun to show signs of cubanization in its rhythm. This was the start of the fusion which eventually effected so much music and life generally in Cuba.
A Cuban actor, Francisco Covarrubias, was a prominent member of the troupe, and figured on its posters. He was a basso buffo, and an author of entremeses
Entremés
Entremés, is a short, comic theatrical performance of one act, usually played during the interlude of a performance of a long dramatic work, in the 16th and 17th centuries in Spain. Later it became the sainete....
(one-act farces), zarzuelas and sainete
Sainete
A sainete was a popular Spanish comic opera piece, a one-act dramatic vignette, with music. It was often placed at the end of entertainments, or between other types of performance. It was vernacular in style, and used scenes of low life. Active from the 18th to 20th centuries, it superseded the...
s. As the vogue for Spanish-style theatre waned, Covarrubias led the way to genuinely Cuban theatrical formats.
Zarzuela
Zarzuela is a small-scale light operettaOperetta
Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...
format. Starting off with imported Spanish content (List of zarzuela composers), it developed into a running commentary on Cuba's social and political events and problems. Zarzuela has the distinction of providing Cuba's first recording artist: the soprano Rosalía 'Chalía' Díaz de Herrera
Chalía Herrera
Chalía Herrera, born Rosalía Gertrudis de la Concepción Díaz de Herrera y de Fonseca , was a Cuban soprano. She had the distinction of being the first Cuban musical artist to be recorded. She recorded, outside Cuba, numbers from the zarzuela Cadíz in 1898 on unnumbered Bettini cylinders...
made, outside Cuba, the first recordings by a Cuban artist. She recorded numbers from the zarzuela Cadíz in 1898 on unnumbered Bettini
Gianni Bettini
Gianni Bettini was an early audiophile. He made a number of high-end phonographs that are highly sought after today. He invented a playback device which improves the sound quality of recordings; The Micro-reproducer...
cylinders.
Zarzuela reached its peak in the first half of the 20th century. Musical director Jorge Anckermann
Jorge Anckermann
Jorge Anckermann was a Cuban pianist, composer and bandleader. He started in music at eight with his father. At ten he was able to substitute in a trio...
produced zarzuelas, reviews and comedies at the Alhambra. A string of front-rank composers such as Gonzalo Roig
Gonzalo Roig
Gonzalo Roig was a Cuban musician, composer, musical director and founder of several orchestras. He was a pioneer of the symphonic movement in Cuba....
, Eliseo Grenet
Eliseo Grenet
Eliseo Grenet Sánchez was a Cuban pianist and a leading composer/arranger of the day. He composed music for stage shows and films, and some famous Cuban dance music. Eliseo was one of three musical brothers, all composers, the others being Emilio and Ernesto...
, Ernesto Lecuona
Ernesto Lecuona
Ernesto Lecuona y Casado was a Cuban composer and pianist of Canarian father and Cuban mother, and worldwide fame. He composed over six hundred pieces, mostly in the Cuban vein, and was a pianist of exceptional quality....
and Rodrigo Prats
Rodrigo Prats
Rodrigo Prats was a Cuban composer, violinist, pianist and orchestral director. The son of a musician, Jaime Prats, Rodrigo began to study music at the age of nine...
produced hits for the Regina and Martí theatres in Havana. Great stars like the vedette Rita Montaner
Rita Montaner
Rita Montaner, born Rita Aurelia Fulcida Montaner y Facenda , was a Cuban singer, pianist, actress and star of stage, film, radio and television. In Cuban parlance, she was a vedette , and she was well known in Mexico City, Paris, Miami and New York, where she performed, filmed and recorded on...
, who could sing, play the piano, dance and act, were the Cuban equivalents of Mistinguett
Mistinguett
Mistinguett was a French actress and singer, whose birth name was Jeanne Bourgeois. She was at one time the best-paid female entertainer in the world...
and Josephine Baker
Josephine Baker
Josephine Baker was an American dancer, singer, and actress who found fame in her adopted homeland of France. She was given such nicknames as the "Bronze Venus", the "Black Pearl", and the "Créole Goddess"....
in Paris. Some of the best known zarzuelas are La virgen morena (Grenet), Nina Rita (Grenet and Lecuona), María la O, El batey, Rosa la China (all Lecuona); Gonzalo Roig with La Habana de noche; Rodrigo Prats with Amalia Batista and La perla del caribe; and above all, Cecilia Valdés (the musical of the most famous Cuban novel of the 19th century, with music by Roig and script by Prats and Agustín Rodríguez). Artists who were introduced to the public in the lyric theatre include Caridad Suarez, María de los Angeles Santana, Esther Borja
Esther Borja
Esther Borja Lima is a Cuban soprano.Borja was trained in solfége and music theory by Juan Elósegui, and in singing by Rubén Lepchutz. She graduated as a teacher in 1934, and began her career in 1935; that year she performed, with Ernesto Lecuona on piano, at the National Theatre , and at the...
and Ignacio Villa, who had such a round, black face that Rita Montaner called him Bola de Nieve
Bola de Nieve
Bola de Nieve , born Ignacio Jacinto Villa, was a successful Cuban singer-pianist and songwriter, whose round, black face earned him the nickname by which he was always known....
('Snowball').
Bufo
Cuban Bufo theatre is an example of a form of comedy, ribald and satirical, with stock figures imitating types that might be found anywhere in the country. Bufo had its origin around 1800-15 as an older form, tonadilla, began to vanish from Havana. Francisco Covarrubias the 'caricaturist' (1775–1850) was its creator. Gradually, the comic types threw off their European models and became more and more creolized and Cuban. Alongside, the music followed. Argot from slave barracks and poor barrios found its way into lyrics that are those of the guarachaGuaracha
The guaracha is a genre of Cuban popular music, of rapid tempo and with lyrics. The word had been used in this sense at least since the late 18th and early 19th century. Guarachas were played and sung in musical theatres and in low-class dance salons. They became an integral part of Bufo comic...
:
-
- Una mulata me ha muerto!
- Y no prendan a esa mulata?
- Como ha de quedar hombre vivo
- si no prendan a quien mata!
-
- La mulata es como el pan;
- se debe comer caliente,
- que en dejandola enfriar
- ni el diablo le mete el diente!
-
-
- (A mulata's done for me!
- What's more, they don't arrest her!
- How can any man live
- If they don't take this killer?
-
-
-
- A mulatta is like fresh bread
- You gotta eat it while it's hot
- If you leave it till she's cool
- Even the devil can't get a bite!)
-
So the bufo theatre became fertile ground for that typically Cuban musical form, the guaracha.
Vaudeville
Vernacular theatre of various types often includes music. Formats rather like the British Music HallMusic hall
Music Hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment which was popular between 1850 and 1960. The term can refer to:# A particular form of variety entertainment involving a mixture of popular song, comedy and speciality acts...
, or the American Vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
, still occur, where an audience is treated to a pot-pourri of singers, comedians, bands, sketches and speciality acts. Even in cinemas during the silent movies, singers and instrumentalists would appear in the interval, and a pianist would play during the films. Bola de Nieve and María Teresa Vera
María Teresa Vera
María Teresa Vera was a Cuban singer, guitarist and composer. She was an outstanding example of the Cuban trova movement....
are two stars who played in cinemas in their early days. Burlesque
Burlesque
Burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects...
was also common in Havana before 1960.
African 'theatre'
All the African cultures which were brought to Cuba had traditions, which survive erratically to the present day, not always in detail, but in general style. The best preserved are the African polytheistic religions, where, in Cuba at least, the instruments, the language, the chants, the dances and their interpretations are quite well preserved.Not until after the Second World War do we find detailed printed descriptions or recordings of African sacred ceremonies in Cuba. Inside the cults, music, song, dance and ceremony were (and still are) learnt by heart by means of demonstration, including such ceremonial procedures as are conducted in an African language. The experiences were (and some still are) private to the initiated, until the work of the ethnologist Fernándo Ortíz
Fernando Ortiz
Fernando Ortiz Fernández was a Cuban essayist, ethnomusicologist and scholar of Afro-Cuban culture. Ortiz was a prolific polymath dedicated to exploring, recording, and understanding all aspects of indigenous Cuban culture...
, who devoted a large part of his life to investigating the influence of African culture in Cuba. The first detailed transcription of percussion, song and chants are to be found in his great works.
External links
- http://merrick.library.miami.edu/cubanHeritage/theater/ Selected digital images from theater collections held by the Cuban Heritage Collection of the University of Miami Libraries.