Ruperto Chapí y Lorente (27 March 1851 - 25 March 1909) was a Spanish

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

 composer, and co-founder of the Sociedad General de Autores y Editores

Sociedad General de Autores y Editores

Sociedad General de Autores y Editores is the main collecting society for songwriters, composers and music publishers in Spain. It is similar to ASCAP. The composer and performer Teddy Bautista is the Chairman of the Board of Directors. The SGAE was founded in 1941 as General Society of Authors of...

.

Chapí was born at Villena

Villena

Villena is a city in Spain, in the Valencian Community. It is located at the northwest part of Alicante, and borders to the west with Castilla-La Mancha and Murcia, to the north with the province of Valencia and to the east and south with the province of Alicante. It is the capital of the comarca...

, the son of a Valencian barber. He trained in his home town and Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

. He wrote a large number of symphonic, band, choral and chamber works, as well as zarzuela

Zarzuela

Zarzuela is a Spanish lyric-dramatic genre that alternates between spoken and sung scenes, the latter incorporating operatic and popular song, as well as dance...

s and 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...

s, becoming, alongside Tomás Bretón

Tomás Bretón

Tomás Bretón was a Spanish musician and composer.-Biography:Tomás Bretón was born in Salamanca.He gained renown as a result of the success of his zarzuela La verbena de la Paloma, although other were well-received works, included his operas Los amantes de Teruel, based on the eponymous legend,...

, a fellow pupil of Emilio Arrieta

Emilio Arrieta

Pascual Juan Emilio Arrieta Corera was a Spanish composer.Arrieta was born in Puente la Reina, Navarre, and died in Madrid...

 at the Madrid Conservatory. He was one of the most popular and important composers of his time. He wrote zarzuelas in all shapes and sizes, including the 3-act zarzuela grande and the one-act género chico

Género chico

Género chico is a Spanish genre of short light musical plays. It is a subgenre of zarzuela, the Spanish operetta...

forms. His most celebrated work is La revoltosa, written in the latter style. Many of the preludes to his zarzuelas (including those to El tambor de granaderos and La patria chica) have remained staple items in Spanish orchestral concerts.

He died in Madrid in 1909.

Concert works

• Sinfonía en Re (Symphony in D) (by 1879)
• Fantasía Morisca (1873/1879)
• Combate de Don Quijote contra las Ovejas - Scherzo (1869)

Principal zarzuelas and operas

• Música clasica, zarzuela in 1 act (1880)
• La tempestad, zarzuela in 3 acts (1882)
• La bruja, zarzuela in 3 acts (1887)
• El milagro de la Virgen, zarzuela in 3 acts (1884)
• El rey que rabió, zarzuela in 3 acts (1891)
• Curro Vargas, zarzuela in 3 acts (1898)
• El tambor de granaderos, zarzuela in 1 act (1894)
• La revoltosa, zarzuela in 1 act (1897)
• La chavala, zarzuela in 1 act (1898)
• El barquillero, zarzuela in 1 act (1900)
• El puñao de rosas, zarzuela in 1 act (1902)
• La venta de Don Quijote, zarzuela in 1 act (1902)
• La patria chica, zarzuela in 1 act (1907)
• Margarita la tornera
  Margarita la tornera
  Margarita la tornera is an opera in three acts composed by Ruperto Chapí to a libretto by Carlos Fernández Shaw, based on a dramatic poem by José Zorrilla...
  
  , opera in 3 acts (1909)

External links