Identity and Performance: The Spanish Zarzuela in Argentina

Nation, Identity and Performance: The Spanish Zarzuela in Argentina, 1890–1900 Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film 0(0) 1–26 ! The Author(s) 2017 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1748372717724641 journals.sagepub.com/home/nct Kristen McCleary Abstract This article argues that the Spanish zarzuela, the most popular entertainment genre in Buenos Aires, Argentina in the 1890s, sowed the seeds of its own demise, precisely because of its success as an entertainment export. In the early 1890s, Buenos Aires’ audience members were eager for Spanish entertainment, but by the decade’s end they began to question the appropriateness of having Argentine character types performed by its former colonisers. Despite the fact that Spanish actors worked hard to integrate themselves with Argentine playwrights, helping Argentines to establish their own theatre industry, over time Argentine audiences began to demand entertainment that depicted their own nation and customs. Tensions over national identity reached a peak as a result of the Cuban independence movement of 1895–98. Zarzuela performers were visible and vulnerable symbols of Spanish colonisation during its last moments as a colonial power on the stages of the Americas. Keywords Theatre, Buenos Aires, independence, mass entertainment, zarzuela The Spanish zarzuela, a form of light opera with spoken dialogue interspersed with musical numbers and sung lyrics, was the most highly attended form of live popular entertainment in the 1890s in Buenos Aires, Argentina.1 The zarzuela was largely an urban genre in terms of where it was performed: Madrid (Spain), Buenos Aires, Mexico City (Mexico), and Havana (Cuba), but in terms of its content, it drew from the regional customs and habits of urban and rural Spain. Clinton Young Corresponding author: Kristen McCleary Email: [email protected] 2 Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film 0(0) argues that Spain lacked a state-oriented project of national identity, which allowed regional ‘nationalisms’ to be particularly strong: ‘In Spain, more than any other major European country, the development of nationalism and national identity occurred on the popular level.’2 Young sees the zarzuela as being a potent vehicle for the expression of Spanish identity due to the genre’s focus on the working classes that was incorporated into the zarzuela through regional music, fashion, and dance. Most importantly, he also identifies the zarzuela as a vehicle through which Spanish national identity was forged through a second thematic strain of the genre: the historical narrative. Performed outside of Spain, these zarzuelas increasingly created friction with the growing national orientation of the audience members from Spain’s former, and in the case of Cuba, current colonies in the Americas.3 In this article, I argue that the Spanish zarzuela was the first form of mass entertainment to circulate between Spain and the Americas, preceding more technologically dependent entertainment genres, like film, by two decades. If in the early 1890s, there was a demand for zarzuela performances to be exact replicas of those in Spain, by the decade’s end, audience members were increasingly contesting performances that they viewed as inauthentic, especially in regards to the presentation of national themes and character types.4 The zarzuela resulted in collaborations between Argentine playwrights and Spanish actors who set the template for Argentine national theatre. It also fostered a network of intellectuals and performers who unified their work with political activism during moments of democratic openings. The genre also generated conversation and debate about what it meant to be ‘Argentine’, as Spanish performers and Argentine playwrights colluded to create a hybrid genre known as the zarzuela criolla where Argentines wrote the plays and Spaniards performed them. How the genre of zarzuela performance might be understood as a form of ‘mass entertainment’ merits a brief discussion. In the 1930s, Walter Benjamin defined ‘mass entertainment’ as relying on mechanical reproduction of artworks capable of producing a ‘mass existence’ of copies that could be distributed widely.5 For Benjamin, mass culture did not exist before film. Other scholars have limited their use of the term ‘mass entertainment’ to film, also arguing that there was something unique to technologically reproduced entertainment.6 Increasingly, scholars are questioning definitions of ‘mass’ art, culture, and entertainment to include theatre and the print media. Jeffrey Knapp, most recently, argues that Renaissance plays take on a similar function to Hollywood Golden Cinema, and that they should be considered a form of ‘mass entertainment’ for their mass appeal to a heterogeneous audience. Knapp argues that what defines ‘mass entertainment’ is the inseparable connection between audience and form of entertainment – that the relationship is dialectical rather than one of simple cause and effect. He explains: My purpose in focusing on the connections between Renaissance drama and modern film is not at all to deny the existence of mass entertainment in other times or places. On the contrary, I hope that my research might prompt other scholars to explore different mass entertainment linkages than the ones I address here.7 Nation, Identity and Performance 3 Building on Knapp’s work, I propose that the zarzuela makes a particularly compelling case for being a form of ‘mass entertainment’ in the era before film. If reliance on technology is a key requisite, as Benjamin argues, the multimedia format of the zarzuela certainly was dependent upon a variety of technologies: librettos were printed in publishing houses at the same time that zarzuela performances were being staged.8 The movement of zarzuela companies relied on improved steamship travel that made transatlantic travel affordable and relatively fast: a touring company might leave Cádiz (Spain), arrive in Buenos Aires, rehearse, and perform in under three weeks.9 The telegraph allowed a play to debut in Madrid and have its script sent to Buenos Aires within days.10 Newspapers communicated the comings and goings of actors and companies and their repertoires, where and when plays would be performed, and invaluable details about live performances. They also provide a more complete picture of the connections between audience, performer, and urban milieu than one would get just reading national histories of theatre, librettos of zarzuela productions, or memoirs.11 If ‘mass entertainment’ is dependent upon a large heterogeneous audience as Noel Carroll argues, the zarzuela also fits this criterion well.12 One reason why zarzuela performers were drawn to Buenos Aires was that it was a city that had a substantial population. In addition, the natural audience, Spaniards, comprised a large immigrant group in the 1880s, making up over twenty per cent of the population. Argentina’s capital had doubled in size between 1874 and 1890, and with a population of almost half a million inhabitants, could sustain large numbers of zarzuela companies. A lack of national acting companies created a demand for performers and Spain was able to supply them readily. In 1886, zarzuelas comprised eight per cent of the city’s indoor leisure time entertainment. By 1895, this number had jumped to over sixty per cent.13 While the zarzuela appealed to Spanish immigrants, it is worth noting that the majority of Spanish immigrants in Buenos Aires were from Spain’s northern province of Galicia, rather than Madrid, the centre of zarzuela production.14 It is not far-fetched to see zarzuelas as contributing to a shared sense of Spanish identity in Argentina just as it contributed to a rising sense of Argentine national identity, at the same time. Key to the zarzuela’s impact in Buenos Aires was its size. I wonder how many other cosmopolitan capital cities sustained over ten commercial theatres and eleven foreign acting companies from one country, as Buenos Aires did in the late nineteenth century.15 The fact that Spanish zarzuela was so pervasive in the city also meant that Spanish culture, music, and mores were present on a larger scale than the numbers of the immigrant population alone might suggest. Finally, if mass entertainment relies on the ‘reproducibility’ of the artistic work in question, the zarzuela also complies, albeit as a live performance genre in which the copies were not exact. The most popular zarzuelas were performed throughout Spain and wherever zarzuela companies toured in the Americas. For example, the two largest hits, La Verbena de la Paloma [Our Festival of the Lady of the Dove] and La gran vı´a [The Grand Boulevard] were performed in Madrid, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Santiago (Chile), Montevideo (Uruguay), and 4 Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film 0(0) Medellı́n (Colombia), and presumably in other cities that have yet to have their zarzuela histories recorded.16 During the 1890s, zarzuela hits in Buenos Aires were played in a number of theatres at the exact same time. In 1895, for example, the play Domingo de Ramas [Palm Sunday] was performed in three different theatres simultaneously. One critic reviewed them all the same week, comparing and contrasting the number of live musicians each had, stage and costume designs, and which theatres had improved their performances over time.17 In sum, categorising the zarzuela as a form of mass entertainment allows its impact to be most fully understood. The zarzuela dominated popular entertainment in Argentina and it is precisely because of its widespread circulation throughout Spain and much of the Americas that it began to elicit discussion about the appropriateness of foreign nationals to depict Argentine accents, mannerisms, and character types on the city’s stages. Scholarship The height of the zarzuela in the Americas in the late nineteenth century has been little explored. Most scholarship focuses on the zarzuela in Spain, its country of origin.18 Two important works that examine the zarzuela in the Americas overlook the 1890s almost entirely: Janet Sturman’s Zarzuela: Spanish Operetta, American Stage focuses primarily on the zarzuela in Cuba and the United States in the twentieth century.19 Susan Thomas, whose work is on Cuba, also focuses on the twentieth century. She writes: ‘The source of some of the Western Hemisphere’s best-loved melodies, the zarzuela is one of the most oft-mentioned and least discussed genres in Cuban music history.’20 The extant historiography of the zarzuela in the Americas overlooks the richest time period of zarzuela performances (the 1890s) and the country (Argentina) that supported the most performances of the genre in the region. While Argentine histories of theatre do address the importance of Spanish acting companies in paving the way for Argentine commercial theatre, very little work has focused explicitly on the zarzuela.21 A further obstacle to the study of the zarzuela in South America is a lack of archives devoted to the topic.22 A recent interest in popular culture has reoriented scholarship towards the zarzuela for its ability to shed light on the attitudes, behaviours, and activities of its working- and middleclass audience members.23 Similar to the blues, tango, and what might be seen as their contemporary Latin American equivalent, cumbia,24 the zarzuela’s success was reliant on its appeal to non-elites. It was also entertainment that was commercially popular: no government supported or subsidised zarzuela performers in their tours across the Atlantic. As a result, the genre was responsive to audience tastes that often put it at odds with theatre critics who deemed it as crass, unsophisticated, and at times, even obscene. Nation, Identity and Performance 5 Zarzuela’s Origins and Transformations in Spain In both Europe and the Americas, the zarzuela responded to social, political, and economic changes, making it the most popular genre of entertainment of its era. Generally speaking, the zarzuela is a music-laden work structured around one unified plot that combines dialogue, song, and dance. Above all, the zarzuela is particular to Spain, having developed there in the seventeenth century. It was virtually indistinguishable from Italian opera until the reign of Ferdinand VI (1746–59) in Spain when the higher costs of performances caused zarzuela composers and performers to look for sponsorship in new areas, finding it by moving towards the middle classes. Clinton Young dates the modern and short form of the zarzuela to the 1830s–40s when Spanish composers, seeking to distinguish their music from Italian operettas, began to identify their musical theatre with the strictly Spanish nomenclature of zarzuela.25 Zarzuela performances originally were three acts and took upwards of four hours to perform. A weakening economy prompted theatre managers to provide shorter and cheaper forms of entertainment.26 What increasingly defined the one-act zarzuela was its urban content and context. Zarzuela has proven to be a genre that is malleable and responsive to rapidly changing socio-economic transformations. International touring companies evidenced the porous nature of the zarzuela, as they would absorb some of the local linguistic and musical traits unique to their touring venues, while at the same time the mass nature of the zarzuela as an export inevitably influenced and shaped local musical theatre productions. Zarzuela in the Americas While many Latin American countries had their own national theatrical traditions, in the late nineteenth century there were not enough national acting companies to keep up with the demand for entertainment in urbanised capital cities. The nineteenth century left its mark on Latin American countries in several ways. One, much of the region had experienced brutal wars of independence from Spain in the period from roughly 1810 to 1825. Two, conservative caudillos emerged midcentury who restored order through the use of measured force, which led to political stability and economic growth. Three, at the end of the nineteenth century, liberal governments returned to power and solicited foreign investment in order to modernise their nations. It was at this third historical moment that dramatic urbanisation swept through national capitals, setting the stage, so to speak, for an increased demand for urban entertainment. The weak nations and fledgling governments of Latin America had not provided much opportunity for the development of national acting companies. In the case of Argentina, the most popular performers arose from the rural circus tradition.27 While Spain had also experienced political strife of its own in the nineteenth 6 Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film 0(0) century, the wars of independence in the Americas had not been fought on Spanish soil; thus urban entertainers in Spain developed and deepened their skills without interruption. Demand for musical entertainment in urban centres of the Americas meant that Spanish acting companies who were underemployed during the low season of theatre in Spain could supplement their income by travelling overseas. The most lucrative destinations were capital cities, but intrepid zarzuela performers travelled widely in places both remote (Paraguay) and far-flung (the Philippines).28 The richly detailed manuscript collection of the Spanish composer Manuel Areu (1845–1942) gives us insight into the origins of some of these companies. Born into a family of performers, Areu enjoyed travels abroad, facilitated by his sister’s marriage to a successful comic tenor who had been contracted to work in Cuba. The couple soon convinced Areu to join them after receiving news that the famous composer Joaquin Gaztambide, who owned the rights to his zarzuelas, was set to tour Cuba and needed an acting company to accompany him. Areu accepted a three-year contract to tour Cuba and Mexico as part of the Alisu Zarzuela Company. The company immediately met with political turbulence in Cuba, as they landed there on the eve of the Ten Years’ War. Theatres were focal points of political activity and protest in Havana. A violent incident took place on 22 January 1869 at the Villanuevo Theatre, where ‘unscripted pro-independence remarks by a cast member sparked a three-day orgy of violence in Havana’.29 Historian John Chasteen interprets the violence as Spanish retaliation against Cuban nativism that was being expressed through a performance of Cuban blackface.30 José Martı́ was famously caught up in the violence since he was at a political meeting only three blocks from the theatre. His mother came to his rescue on 23 January 1869 during the height of the violence, which he later commemorated in a book of poetry, Versos sencillos.31 Public officials throughout Latin America became even more wary about the role that theatres played in fomenting disorder after this event.32 Areu’s company quickly left Cuba as a result of the political uprising there and travelled by steamship to Veracruz and then to its final destination: Mexico City. The relative proximity of Mexico and Cuba and the fact that both had large Spanish populations established them as the earliest centres of zarzuela performance.33 Buenos Aires displaced Havana and Mexico City as the centre of zarzuela performances in the Americas by the 1890s, largely as a by-product of its own demographic explosion, which included a numerically important group of Spaniards. Over two million Spaniards entered Argentina between 1857 and 1930.34 The nation as a whole received 5,917,259 immigrants between 1871 and 1914. About half of these arrivals remained in Argentina permanently. The percentage of inhabitants living in urban areas rose from twenty-nine per cent in 1869 to fifty-three per cent in 1914.35 Given the fact that in 1895, Buenos Aires alone had a population of 661,205, that is, over two hundred thousand more residents than Mexico City and Havana each, it is easy to see why Buenos Aires became the focus of zarzuela companies from Spain in this decade.36 Buenos Aires served as a central hub from which zarzuela companies would arrive before setting off on tours to other Argentine cities as well as the bordering Nation, Identity and Performance 7 nations of Bolivia, Paraguay, Chile, and Uruguay. Antonio Vico, the author of popular zarzuelas Cádiz and Los valientes [The Brave Ones], gives insight into the itinerant nature of theatre practitioners. Embarking from Buenos Aires, he then toured in Chile, Peru, Venezuela, and Cuba before returning to Madrid in May, two months later.37 Theatre historian Willis Knapp Jones inadvertently underscores the central position that Buenos Aires played in South American tours when he tells of a zarzuela company that was stranded in Paraguay in 1881 because it could not make enough money to return – not to Madrid – but to Buenos Aires.38 In addition, Buenos Aires shared the Rio de la Plata with another urban capital city, Montevideo (Uruguay), providing performers another easily reached staging ground.39 This surge of the zarzuela in 1890s’ Buenos Aires coincided with the Cuban movement for independence. Zarzuela performers operated as cultural attachés as their movements across the Atlantic served to unify the diaspora of Spanish entertainers and journalists, which was connected from Madrid to Buenos Aires, Mexico City, and Havana. Events in Cuba dislodged a number of Spanish performers from Havana who could find steadier and less dangerous work elsewhere in the Americas. For example, in 1897, on the eve of US intervention in Cuba, the highly esteemed classical Spanish actors Marı́a Guerrero and Leopoldo Burón visited Buenos Aires.40 Guerrero and her husband moved to Argentina this same year as they were contracted with the Teatro Odeon to perform both classical drama and popular zarzuelas. Burón had been a personal friend of José Martı́. The two met when Martı́ was exiled in Spain in 1873, at which time Burón had taken great interest in Martı́, inviting him to the theatre on several occasions. Martı́ credited Burón with inspiring him to write his first dramatic work, Adultera.41 It should be noted that Martı́ himself was a well-known figure in Argentina. His series of articles, ‘North American Scenes’, written while he lived in exile in New York, were all published in Argentina’s important newspaper, La nación, throughout the 1880s.42 In 1897, two years after Martı́’s death, Burón visited Buenos Aires as part of the Francisco Pastor acting company.43 He eventually relocated to Mexico. Areu himself briefly returned to Cuba after the end of the Spanish American War, before deciding that the political climate was not supportive of his entertainment. He performed in Argentina in 1899. It is likely that these actors had met a saturated market in Buenos Aires and had more room for professional growth in Mexico City. But it is clear that as zarzuela performers were pushed out of Cuba, they connected in both Buenos Aires and Mexico City, where they worked with national actors of the Americas and other intellectuals. Justo López de Gomara (1859–1923), a prominent Spanish immigrant to Argentina, also links Spain, Argentina, and Cuba together through his life story. Orphaned as a child, he was sent to live with his guardian, a prominent Spanish politician, Eugenio Montero Rı́os (1832–1914). Montero Rı́os was a supporter of the First Spanish Republic (1868–74) and later became a founding member of the Spanish Liberal Party, writing much of the Republic’s legislation. He also became a signatory on the Treaty of Paris that ended the Spanish American War in Cuba.44 8 Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film 0(0) López de Gomara immigrated to Argentina and married Mercedes Lugones, a member of a prominent elite Argentine family. He served as the director of El Correo Español, one of the largest daily newspapers directed towards the Spanish immigrant community, from 1880 to 1890. In 1887, this newspaper published four thousand copies daily, a substantial run when compared to the two largest Argentine dailies, La Nación and La Prensa, which had a circulation of eighteen thousand each.45 Between 1895 and 1898, El Correo Español published articles tracing the chronology of particular battles and events, highlighting prominent individuals; reporting on Cuban geography, culture, and people; and emphasising the ever-growing role of the United States in the conflict. This served to create a close connection between Spanish immigrants in Buenos Aires to events unfolding in Cuba. Actors Willis Knapp Jones argues, ‘The success of a country’s theatre rests fundamentally on its actors.’46 Spanish actors in Latin America during the era of Cuban independence were forced to walk a very thin line, seeking to accommodate and amuse audience members while also protecting their own sense of loyalty to their homeland. While some zarzuela performers returned annually to Spain, many leading actors and actresses relocated on an almost permanent basis to Mexico, Cuba, and Argentina. As long-term residents of Latin America, performers were both active citizens as well as popular entertainers there. Newspapers provide some detail on how actors cultivated ties abroad. In Buenos Aires, the press followed the comings and goings of zarzuela companies, often highlighting the movements of specific actors. Rogelio Juárez (1859–1931) was one of the most well-known comic actors from Spain, who had first arrived in Argentina with a classically trained actor, Mariano Gale (1850–1922), as part of the Dramatic Spanish Company in 1888.47 They both ended up spending several years in Argentina. The Argentine press commented on the return of Juárez from Spain, reporting that he was ‘well-loved’ by Argentine audiences.48 Emilio Orejon represented an actor who moved fluidly between Madrid and Buenos Aires, performing the same zarzuela in both places.49 The comic tenor Julio Ruiz also frequently travelled between Buenos Aires and Madrid. He was one of the most popular actors in Buenos Aires. He sold out the Rivadavia Theatre for his annual benefit performance, which took place right before he returned to Madrid.50 The Spanish-born Millanes sisters, Dolores ‘Lola’, Carlota, and Susana, were particularly highly regarded in Argentina. Lola, who first came to Argentina in 1886, was often described as the best soprano there. She was a prolific actress known for her comedic roles, especially her portrayal of the maid in the zarzuela Chateau Margaux, where she embodied character types from two regions with a strong local identity in Spain: Galicia and Andalucia.51 She cultivated her Argentine audience, including the phrase, ‘I would die for Buenos Aires’, in at least one live performance of Chateau Margaux that was set entirely in Spain.52 Nation, Identity and Performance 9 Spanish performers not only reached out to Argentine audiences, but also worked closely with Argentine theatre managers and playwrights to institutionalise the business side of theatre, which would benefit all of them.53 The Varela Jordan Zarzuela Company worked with Argentine theatre manager Emilio Onrubia to put into practice the payment of ten per cent of the box office earnings to the composer and librettist of the zarzuela. In 1890, Marcus Zapata was the first composer to earn this fee for his zarzuela El anillo de hierro [The Iron Ring].54 Notably, it was not until 1910 that this economic support for playwrights and composers became law, which transformed Buenos Aires into the Latin American capital of nationally written theatrical productions.55 Spanish actors also supported the work of Argentine playwrights to develop a national theatre by collaborating with them. Theatre critics, who tended to disdain all popular theatrical performances, were suspicious about the success of such an endeavour: ‘We find this goal a bit ambitious due to a scarcity of [national] authors worthy to call themselves such.’56 Political Collaboration and the Rise of the Zarzuela Criolla Most of the playwrights and performers in both Spain and Argentina were involved in political movements towards greater democratisation in their respective nations. Shared political ideologies linked them together in Argentina during key years of sustained political protest of 1889 and 1890, years that coincided with a surge of Spanish immigration and the rise of the one-act zarzuela as the most popular entertainment in Buenos Aires. The political focus of theatre practitioners was on the unseating of Argentina’s unpopular president, Miguel Juárez Celman.57 Juárez Celman was ‘elected’ in 1886 amidst claims of fraud since his brother-inlaw, Julio Roca, directly preceded him as president. A close examination of the events of 1889 and 1890 gives insight into the collaboration and adaptation of the zarzuela in Buenos Aires. Argentina had transformed during this decade from an underpopulated ‘backwater’ to the cosmopolitan ‘Paris’ of South America, largely as a result of exports of animal products that were sold to Britain. Argentina had also become increasingly reliant on loans from Britain to fuel economic growth. Juárez Celman was unpopular for many reasons. He was unable to manage the economics of the nation, largely due to his refusal to return to the gold standard and his allowing provincial banks to issue paper money, which privileged the demands of land speculators over national economic interests. His inept rule led to protests and an increased authoritarianism on his part. An inevitable crash hit Argentina in 1889, when the Baring Brothers of London failed to secure backing for a loan to Argentina, prompting panic in the financial sector. Britain discontinued loans to Argentina, which caused land prices to fall fifty per cent and economic panic to break out. Argentina’s economic crash reshaped urban theatre practices as well. Because Spain had already had a similar experience wherein economic and political decline ushered in the one-act zarzuela, Spanish acting companies quickly adapted to Argentina’s new economic landscape by offering shorter sections of entertainment, 10 Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film 0(0) the zarzuela by the hour, where four plays were performed in one evening to four different audiences. The price of the zarzuela performance fell to under one peso, allowing more of the working and middle class to attend than could afford the time and price for the three-act zarzuela, which dominated until now. Economic and political crisis resulted in the popular, cheap, and successful zarzuela by the hour that transformed the entertainment landscape in Buenos Aires. The zarzuela was the only genre to increase during Juárez Celman’s rule: in 1887, there were a total of 161 zarzuela performances, but in 1891, there were 1048.58 This six-fold rise in zarzuela performances coincided with an overall downturn in audience attendance rates. Zarzuela managers implemented theatre by the hour that replaced the much longer three-hour format. This cut the cost of theatre to under one peso at the same time as it increased overall theatre attendance. The zarzuela had already gone through this transformation in Madrid and Spanish theatre practitioners shared their experience with more but shorter theatre performances in Buenos Aires. The one-act plays were often referred to as belonging to the ge´nero chico, or ‘small genre’ of theatre performances. This compressed collaboration between Spaniards and Argentine theatrical practitioners during Juárez Celman’s rule resulted in the rise of a new hybrid genre, the zarzuela criolla [Argentine zarzuela]. Playwrights such as Nemesio Trejo (Argentine), Justo López de Gomara (Spanish), and Emilio Onrubia (Argentine) all collaborated with one another. Most of their plays actively campaigned against Juárez Celman, through satire.59 Onrubia authored a play in 1889, Lo que sobra y lo que falta [Surpluses and Shortages], which explicitly critiqued Juárez Celman’s economic failures.60 Because of the censorship law, no theatres would stage it, prompting Onrubia to open his own theatre. Supporters and opponents of Juárez Celman made sure to be there when the play debuted in 1889, just two days after Argentina’s Independence Day on 9 July, when political tensions were at their peak. Chaos broke out in the theatre as a result. In April of 1890, a large protest was staged against Juárez Celman. The Onrubia Theatre was riddled with bullets due to the fact that it served as a central meeting point for the new political party. On 26 July 1890, a full-scale military assault was launched from Artillery Park that ultimately led to Juárez Celman’s resignation.61 Playwrights continued to stage plays about the Revolution in the Park over the next twenty years and these plays were often censored for threatening to bring back to the stage a reminder and (assumed) threat of renewed political disorder.62 In the midst of this era of concentrated political turmoil, Justo López de Gomara debuted his play De paseo en Buenos Aires [Strolling Through Buenos Aires], a loose adaptation of the famous Spanish zarzuela La gran vı´a [The Grand Boulevard] by Federico Chueca (1846–1908) and Joaquı́n Valverde Durán (1846–1910) which debuted in Madrid in 1886. It was staged in Buenos Aires quickly thereafter. Structurally speaking, La gran vı´a is a revista or review: one play comprised of several scenes related to urban themes of Madrid that are only loosely connected together with music and dance. Nation, Identity and Performance 11 The first scene of La gran vı´a opens with performers personifying Madrid’s streets and plazas, lamenting their fate in the face of urban renovation where a new Grand Boulevard will result in their destruction. Gender and social class tensions are played out in a scene set in an upper-class house where the maid, Menegilda, has to endure the commands of the lady of the house. Other allegorical figures appear, including the Gentleman, the Passerby, Peace, Prosperity, and Sincerity. The three thieves (ratas or rats) became iconic figures and appear in many stage plays, as they avoid capture by incompetent policemen. The play ends with the cries of a child as the city gives birth to its future shape and welcomes the arrival of the gran vı´a.63 Lively musical numbers and folkloric dances, such as the polka, waltz, tango, jota, and mazurka, weave through each scene. This play was not just adapted in Buenos Aires, but also in Havana, Santiago, and the United States.64 Its urban themes were both timely and global. López de Gomara’s De paseo en Buenos Aires takes the review structure of La gran vı´a, relocates it to Buenos Aires, focusing on economic and political themes over urban ones. This adaptation is significant for a number of reasons: one, the popularity of La gran vı´a ensured this play would at least initially draw a large audience; two, De paseo debuted in a moment of political and economic chaos, all of which became integrated into its plot; three, it received detailed press coverage as a result of López de Gomara’s position at the helm of El Correo Español;65 and four, it starred some of the top zarzuela performers of the day, including the comic sopranos Teresa and Lola Millanes.66 López de Gomara deliberately entered the political fray of the era with the staging of De paseo en Buenos Aires, which he wrote at the height of the political crisis.67 He had written another play that year that clearly attacked Juárez Celman: Valor cı´vico: apuntes de la revolución (26, 27, 28, de Julio de 1890) [Civic Valor: Points on the Revolution (July 26, 27, 28, 1890)].68 That play was censored. He had better luck with De paseo probably because its point of reference was an urban rather than a politically themed play. Lopéz de Gomara uses the recognisable institutions and localities of Buenos Aires to deliver a critique of the inefficacy of the political and economic policies of Juárez Celman.69 If la gran vı´a had emphasised easily recognisable sites and neighbourhoods of Madrid, de Paseo focused on those public spaces that were most traversed and known by a porteño (referring to residents of the ‘port city’ Buenos Aires) audience. Notably, the first scene takes place in the San Martin theatre, a popular theatre frequented by the working and middle urban classes. An actor pretending to be the theatre’s manager pokes his head through the stage curtain announcing that they are unable to proceed with the scheduled play but will substitute another one. From the audience, another actor, playing a spectator named Diego, responds belligerently, demanding his money back. Soon a third actor, in the role of a police officer, arrests Diego for disturbing public order. The play then moves to the stage of the theatre, now serving as a police station, where Diego awaits his fate. He soon espies one of his shipmates who had emigrated from Italy to Argentina with him. This figure, who introduces himself as ‘the Count’, has been 12 Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film 0(0) arrested for not paying his tram fare. Since arriving in Buenos Aires, the Count has conned his way through the city, trying to pass as a titled aristocrat so that others will think that he is so important they will pay his way. This, then, is a thinly veiled critique of the political system, where an entrenched and fraudulent elite class feels entitled to coast on the coattails of the workers. Like many plays of the era, the humour of the play focuses on underscoring the importance of local knowledge. López de Gomara might have been from Spain, but years of living in Buenos Aires allowed him to cultivate humour directed at an immigrant’s naiveté about his newly adopted country. López de Gomara had been studying Argentine characters ever since he arrived in Buenos Aires. His almanac for Spaniards in Argentina, for example, contained illustrations elucidating how Argentine ‘types’ are different from their Spanish counterparts. His 1884 play, Gauchos y gringos [Cowboys and Immigrants], also focused on unique Argentine characters, although he was criticised for being inauthentic.70 One example of local knowledge occurs at the police station, when the Count jumps when he hears the police officer use the word ‘maté’. The Count does not know that he is being offered tea (yerba maté tea is a traditional drink in South America) but has only understood the word as meaning ‘kill’ from the Spanish verb ‘matar’. Diego and the Count are released from jail and they then take a journey ‘strolling through’ the city where they cross paths with a variety of urban types easily recognised by a porteño audience: squabbling street sweepers and cooks, boys selling newspapers, an Italian opera singer, French chorus girls, and a professional dog walker. De paseo travels through the quintessential institutions of Buenos Aires, from the San Martin Theatre, to the police commissary, the Plaza Victoria (later the Plaza de Mayo), the Immigrants’ Hotel, La Boca del Riachuelo, a fruit market, the port, the stock exchange, and the Avenida de Mayo [May Avenue]. It also includes local character types, like compadritos, gauchos, and Italian and Spanish immigrants, and borrows from La gran vı´a several allegorical representations of urban life. Each scene is undergirded by economic transactions that rest on fraud. Diego wants to be refunded for the play he had come to see but is replaced by another; his protesting the change results in his arrest. The police try to fine both Diego and the Count on minor charges. They ask exorbitant amounts that no one can pay. The Count’s own con has resulted in his amassing an ounce of gold, but the con is outdone by thieves, the three cuervitos [little crows] of the play, based on the three thieving ‘rats’, iconic characters from La gran vı´a. The cuervitos are an excellent example of how the play has adapted to Argentina, for they declare themselves to be ‘compadritos buenos y bonitos’ [genuine and good-looking ruffians]. The figure of the compadrito is a character type unique to Buenos Aires. Julie Taylor describes him as ‘lazy, dishonest and affected’ and ‘at the same time glamorous and exciting’.71 To support its theme of economic fraud, many scenes reference Buenos Aires’s financial institutions. Characters named Oro [Gold] and Papel [Paper Bills] appear to Diego and the Count. Gold is dressed to the nines, while Paper Bills wears rags poorly held together by untied threads. Paper Bills asks Gold if he remembers when Nation, Identity and Performance 13 they both used to go walking as equals, hand in hand, and Gold responds, ‘You are where you are because of your profligate and vice-filled ways!’ The dialogue between the two characters is a strong critique of Juárez Celman’s economic policies, referring to rampant land speculation and worthless Argentine credit. Diego and the Count stroll into the Stock Exchange and converse with floor runners there. The Count sees that all the transactions run only on ‘words’ and since smooth talk has been the basis of his success as a charlatan, he seizes on the opportunity, declaring, ‘Losing is impossible, because I will never lose my ability to talk.’ The next character to appear, an ‘anonymous society’ or corporation, personified as a seductress, certainly underscores the economic critiques of the play. Characters named John Bull, the personification of England, and Sterling, representing the pound, appear to critique the role of Britain in the economy of Argentina. These two sing a little ditty about how good their investments in Argentine railroads have been for them: ‘Whether concession or contract, it matters not. We greatly profit either way.’ By the play’s end, the loafer Count has agreed to change his ways and get a job. The aptly named Don Paı́s (Mr. Nation), depicted by an overweight actor to emphasise abundance, applauds the Count’s decision, saying, ‘You will be an example for all who will learn that development does not spring from foolish ways; one only prospers who honourably works!’ This final scene is accompanied by a sumptuous visual display of immigrants and the theme of assimilation, where over forty people take to the stage. One by one a small group representing Argentina’s immigrant community parade on the stage. Each group carries its national flag, accompanied by the live orchestra playing each nation’s anthem: Italy, Spain, France, England, and Germany are all represented. Next, come actors who personify Argentina’s economic base, representing livestock, agricultural viticulture, and manufacturing. Performers also dress as the economic products of particular provinces: Lola Millanes dances a regional folk dance, the gato criollo, to depict a particularly seductive sugar from Tucumán, for example. The final stage is full of all of these figures, including fourteen dancers wearing Argentina’s national colours of blue and white. Stage notes specify that these decorations should be brightly illuminated.72 At the very end, the Argentine Republic speaks out: ‘Proud! I am happy with you, my people. Although young in history, you have already travelled a long road. You will be the first people of the world before the century ends!’ Political corruption has been overthrown by the hard work of immigrants and their assimilation into the Argentine nation promises to lead the nation into a bright, healthy, sustainable future. The play, furthermore, shows that authors of the zarzuela criolla hybrid genre were all too willing to accommodate Argentine nationalism into their work. López de Gomara reprinted reviews and commentary, including the negative ones from other dailies, in the newspaper he edited. Unsurprisingly, the jingoistic patriotism of the final scene was heavily critiqued. The positive commentary focused on how accurately the set designs depicted Buenos Aires’s venues. El Censor heralded López de Gomara for being the father of Argentine national 14 Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film 0(0) theatre and for working to help it mature. Lola Millanes, in particular, was praised for her role and ability to dance the gato criollo, an Argentine folk dance.73 López de Gomara also printed articles that responded to the growing unease with which Argentine audiences reacted to Spaniards who were depicting national types. Lucio V. Mansilla (1831–1913), a former general and prominent writer of the era, most famous for Una excursión a los indios ranqueles [An Expedition to the Ranquel Indians],74 wrote a series of articles on the theme for the magazine Sud America. Mansilla had been a political supporter of Juárez Celman and was a voice that usually represented the point of view of the Argentine elite. Nonetheless, López de Gomara reprinted Mansilla’s article in which he argued that Spanish actors could not adequately depict Argentine characters: There are customs, uses, modalities, idiosyncrasies that are universal. The local is always peculiar. A palm tree in the Plaza de Mayo will never truly be a palm tree—just a replica of one. A Catalan speaking like an Andalusian will always be Catalan. If we travel to Madrid and transport the Principe Theatre here so that an Argentine actor can play the great bullfighter Frascuelo, what kind of Spanish bullfighter will result?75 Mansilla magnanimously recommends the public see the play due to its entertainment value, but he also implores actors to rehearse more and the playwright to write in a style that is more ‘Argentine’ and less foreign.76 A number of articles following in the wake of Mansilla’s debated the merits of and challenges to the rise of an Argentine national theatre.77 Argentine Audiences in the Era of Cuban Independence The height of the zarzuela in Buenos Aires corresponded to the most pronounced years of Cuban independence, 1895–98. In 1895, zarzuelas comprised fifty-nine per cent of all theatrical performances and generated one-third of the gross box office for all entertainment genres in Buenos Aires.78 Zarzuela spectatorship continued to increase throughout the decade so that by 1897, on the eve of the Spanish American War, zarzuelas peaked at seventy-four per cent of the city’s total entertainment offerings. While the Spanish community newspaper El Correo Español dedicated much of its front page to events in Cuba, defending Spanish rule over the island, ‘until the island is capable of ruling itself’, all of the city’s daily newspapers reported on events unfolding in Cuba.79 A zarzuela Los de Cuba [Arrivals from Cuba] from 1888 was restaged in 1895.80 While the zarzuela is not explicitly about Cuban independence, it does tell the story of a Spaniard who pays a young woman he seduced and impregnated to ‘disappear’ to Cuba, and contains both ‘Viva Cuba [Long live Cuba]’ and ‘Viva España’ in its dialogue. In other ways, the conflict in Cuba shaped the language of current events and entertainment in Buenos Aires. For example, a critic for El Correo Español printed the following ‘overheard’ comment below: I heard a woman say [upon exiting the theatre], ‘Just as the Cuban insurrection has shown us that we did not know really know of Spain’s military might Nation, Identity and Performance 15 until now, Dolores has also shown us that it is just as first rate, from the point of view of musicals’81 If zarzuela performers tended to integrate themselves smoothly with Argentine audiences most of the year, twice a year it was impossible to forget the historical relationship between the two countries: May 25 and July 9, when Argentina celebrated important moments in their independence from Spain.82 Between 1895 and 1898, newspapers reveal constant friction in city theatres around these days. Several elements combined to make these volatile years. As commercial venues, theatres added special celebrations to attract large audiences. During independence days, theatres were decked out in the national colours of whichever nation was being celebrated. Streamers were hung, national anthems were sung. As such, theatres were arenas where patriotic gestures and national traditions were embraced and displayed. In Buenos Aires, rituals of nation-building became fused with the commercialisation of entertainment: not only were Argentina’s national holidays celebrated there, but also those of its neighbours, including Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Peru, Brazil, and Uruguay, as well as those of the nations of its immigrant population, such as Bastille Day, Italian Reunification Day, and Columbus Day. Theatres did not miss an opportunity to attract audiences through these special event days.83 In addition, theatres were largely masculine spaces and young elite men went there to enact their own sense of manhood by protecting (and over-interpreting) slights to Argentine national identity. The fact that Spanish performers were required to sing the Argentine national anthem, which included lyrics that were derogatory towards Spain also assured that theatrical productions would be loaded affairs on these days. Finally, the Cuban independence movement kept the theme of nationalism alive and current on the stages of Buenos Aires and Spanish actors had to walk a fine line between amusing and angering Argentine audiences. In Argentina, theatres were one of the main public spaces where rituals of national identity were played out. Not divorced from print culture, by any means, playwrights and journalists were often one and the same individual, with theatre being adaptations of current events.84 The Argentine anthem had been composed in 1813, in the midst of the fight for independence against Spain by Alejandro Vicente López y Planes, a prominent Argentine writer, lawyer, and journalist. Notably, the anthem’s inception was indelibly linked to theatres: in 1884, in homage to the centennial celebration of his grandfather’s birth, Lucio Vicente López explained how his grandfather was at a performance at the Casa de Comedia, one of Buenos Aires’ first theatres, when the words came to him. The grandson wrote, ‘During the second act, against the protests of his friends, my grandfather exited the theatre, his mind on fire, his heart bursting, his chest swelling with inspiration. One can say that in that instant the national anthem was born.’85 The connection between theatre and national identity in Argentina was strong from the beginning. While Argentina and Spain had re-established diplomatic ties in 1865, Spanish diplomats were often advised to vacate the premises of any official activities that 16 Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film 0(0) were to perform the Argentine anthem. The issue concerned the first phrase of the anthem: Hark! Hear the sounds, the sounds that are swelling We are free! We are free! We are free! Hark! Hear you, our fetters are breaking! On her throne noble liberty see! In the sight of the world has arisen A nation glorious rejoicing and free. Her fair brow with laurels encircled The proud Lion of Spain at her knee!86 The emphasis on Spain as a conquered lion rankled the Spanish immigrant community in Buenos Aires. In 1882, López de Gomara used his newspaper and his pull with the Spanish community to actively campaign against a sculpture proposed for Argentina’s Continental Exposition which would have depicted the Argentine national anthem by including the defeated lion of Spain as a primary element.87 On 23 May 1891, El Correo Español published an article reminding Argentines that Blas Perera Morat, a Catalan immigrant, had composed the music for the Argentine anthem. Even though this was accurate, the newspaper’s building was vandalised the following day.88 In 1893, debate about the right of actors to skip over the first stanza went to Congress when it was rumoured that Buenos Aires’ mayor was allowing Spanish performers to omit singing the problematic phrase on independence days.89 The two men who debated the potential amendments to the singing of the national anthem in public places were Lucio Vicente López, grandson of the anthem’s author, who argued to allow injurious phrases to be skipped over, and Congressman Osvaldo Magnasco, a Juárez Celman supporter, who argued that foreigners should not be allowed to alter the Argentine anthem for any reason: ‘It is the anthem of Argentina not of [its author] Vicente López y Planes.’90 Theatres were largely masculine spaces. It was not until the 1900s that matinee performances served to open up the audience in a substantial way to women and children.91 Social class and gender played out in Argentine theatres in a way that positioned young elite men to take charge of ‘protecting’ any slight to the Argentine nation. A common characteristic ascribed to these men was their tendency to operate as indiadas or patotas [gangs who created mischief], sometimes leading to violence, on the streets and in the theatres of Buenos Aires. In 1895, in particular, the year of Jose Marti’s renewed efforts to fight for Cuban independence and his subsequent death in battle, were moments of great tension in Buenos Aires. The press noted an abundance of skirmishes related to the singing of the anthem. Many reports make it clear that Argentine performers tried to take up the burden of singing the lyrics but that the audience members demanded the Spanish performers do so as well.92 Mariano Bosch describes with great detail a series of events that took place in Argentine theatres related to the singing of the anthem in 1895. According to Bosch, there was great build up to the night of 25 May, where ticket Nation, Identity and Performance 17 resellers and members of the ‘indiada’ prepared in advance for a showdown over the singing of the anthem.93 The year before a Spanish performer had replaced the ‘lion’ with ‘mouse’, and it was rumoured that the well-known Spanish soprano singer, Clotilde Perales, was going to do the same. Acknowledging the renewed war in Cuba, Perales was dressed in black, mourning for Spain’s losses, which exacerbated the patriotism of the Argentine audience members further. Fights broke out immediately upon Perales’ manipulation of the lyrics. Once order was restored, Diego Compos, a Spanish actor, who had been hastily handed the Argentine flag, either dropped it or threw it to the ground, and the indiada began to throw chairs onto the stage and the actor had to flee. Later, he was forced to apologise for his actions despite the fact that El Correo Español defended him, arguing that it was the drunken group of young men, who were at fault for trying to force a Spaniard to disrespect his own nation.94 In 1900, President Julio Roca finally allowed the troublesome lyrics to be omitted during live performances but the issue of turbulence in theatres due to the anthem was a mainstay throughout the 1890s. In addition to the anthem, audiences became increasingly vigilant over the ways in which Spaniards performed Argentine roles. In particular, the indiada followed Campos’ stage career and targeted him for his portrayal of a deaf mute Argentine general in a play about Argentine war veterans, La guardia nacional [The National Guard]. They bought seats near to the stage so they could effectively jeer and throw things at him. Once again, El Correo Español opined that this was not fair treatment of the Spanish actor; rather it was ‘misdirected’ patriotism on the part of the audience members.95 In 1897, the Argentine gaucho play Juan Moreira was adapted as a musical and performed by a Spanish zarzuela company under the direction of the Argentine composer, Arturo Berutti. At the end of the evening’s performance, a group of these young men surrounded the theatre’s secretary, demanding that it not be performed again. ‘Why?’, the secretary asked. Because it made fun of Argentines, they responded. The group eventually acquiesced that the play itself was not ‘censurable’, but they ‘created an uproar in the theatre nonetheless’.96 Conclusion While the Spanish zarzuela continued to be performed in the Americas, its apogee ended about the same time that the Spanish American war concluded in 1898. During an era of intense nation-building it did not make sense for foreigners, especially those from the nation that had colonised most of the Americas, to be at the forefront of theatrical entertainment. Audiences wanted to see their own gestures, localities, and vernacular traditions represented on the stages and what is more, they wanted to see them all performed by actors from their own national background, not by Spanish performers who were increasingly viewed as incapable of providing authentic performances of Argentines. Thanks to the zarzuela companies, however, national companies and playwrights had a solid footing from which to emerge and flourish, particularly in Buenos Aires, the capital of zarzuela performances in the Americas. This transition was so successful that by 1900, 18 Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film 0(0) Argentine acting companies began to tour internationally. Famously, the gaucho drama Juan Moreira was performed in Madrid that year.97 Nor did the Spanish zarzuela return to Spain unchanged: Spanish performers absorbed the Cuban habanera and Argentine tango into the zarzuela that they then reimported to Madrid.98 If in the early 1890s, Spanish acting companies were successful at accommodating and adapting to the stages of their former colonies, by the decade’s end the Cuban independence movement converted them into public targets against which Argentines might define themselves. Notes 1. The city of Buenos Aires published statistics annually about theatrical entertainment beginning in 1887 when the zarzuela accounted for eight per cent of overall entertainment. The economic crisis of 1890 in Argentina created a surge in demand for short and cheap forms of urban entertainment. Thus the one-act zarzuela which could be performed five times a night in the same theatre largely replaced the longer three-act format in 1891. This trend was solidified by 1895 when the one-act zarzuela generated over five times as much money ($634,442) as its three-act counterpart ($111,679). Later in this article, I provide statistics that show that the zarzuela’s peak in popularity coincided with the years of the Cuban independence movement (1895–98). See the Anuario Estadı´stico de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires: G. Kraft, 1891) which includes statistics for 1887–90, and the Anuario Estadı´stico (Buenos Aires: G. Kraft, 1896) for data on 1895. 2. Clinton D. Young, Music Theater and Popular Nationalism in Spain, 1880–1930 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2016), p. 10. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, ‘The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception’ (1944), in Adorno and Horkheimer, Dialectics of Enlightenment. Translated by John Cumming (New York: Verso, 1972). 3. Young, Music Theater and Popular Nationalism, pp. 64–82. 4. A theatre critic reviewed two versions of the play El cabo primero [The Corporal], in Buenos Aires that were simultaneously being performed at the Odeon and Olimpo theatres. He evaluated them based on which of the two most closely replicated the one from Madrid. La Nación, 12 July 1893, p. 4. 5. Walter Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility’, trans. Edmund Jephcott, in Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings (eds), Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, vol. 4, 1938–1940 (Cambridge: Belknap, 2003), pp. 251–83. 6. Knapp highlights the ways in which Renaissance audiences were diverse and anonymous as well as the ways in which the mass medium of print was integral to Renaissance theatre. This is the same for the case of the zarzuela. See Jeffrey Knapp, ‘Mass Entertainment Before Mass Entertainment’, New Literary History, 44 (2013), 93–115, 95. 7. Knapp, Pleasing Everyone: Mass Entertainment in Renaissance London and Golden-Age Hollywood (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), p. 4. One cannot mention ‘mass entertainment’ without also acknowledging the Frankfurt School of critical theory and the famous essay by Adorno and Horkheimer, ‘The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception’, The Cultural Studies Reader (London and New York: Routledge: 1993), pp. 31–41. Originally published in 1944, this essay argues, among other points, that by becoming a commodity, art and entertainment have been turned into an ideological medium of domination. Nation, Identity and Performance 19 8. El Correo Español, 20 February 1895, p. 2 reports that the publishing house, Amaro, located in central downtown at 287 Bolı́var Street has published the librettos for several zarzuelas including Breton’s El domingo de ramas. The advertisement notes that the music is arranged for piano and voice and is available for purchase in its different branches throughout the city. 9. José C. Moya delineates the global revolutions that facilitated transatlantic migration in Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires, 1850–1930 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998), pp. 35–43. Transatlantic travel while much improved was still a dangerous undertaking. One of the zarzuela’s most famous performers, Dolores ‘Lola’ Millanes, was killed when her steamship wrecked on a reef off the coast of Cartagena, Spain, in 1906, as she was returning to Buenos Aires. 10. The Olimpo Theatre staged La zarzuela nueva by Sinesio Delgado and Tomás López Torregrosa only two days after it had debuted in Madrid, thanks to the script being sent via telegraph to Buenos Aires (El Correo Español, 20 October 1897, p. 2). 11. Newspapers examined include the English-community newspaper, The Standard, the Spanish-community newspaper, El Correo Español, and the national newspapers El Diario and La Prensa. Even upper-class magazines covered zarzuela entertainment in the 1890s, almost always favourably. These magazines include Revue Illustre´e du Rio de la Plata and La Ilustración Sud-Americana. Zarzuelas continued to be performed in Buenos Aires throughout the early 1900s but they were no longer the most popular form of live entertainment. 12. Knapp critiques Noel Carroll’s A Philosophy of Mass Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) for its emphasis on audience size. Why, Knapp asks, must art be so farflung and why must it reach millions of people for it to be considered mass? in ‘Mass Entertainment’, pp. 96–7. 13. Memoria de la Intendencia Municipal (Buenos Aires: imprenta M. Biedma, 1886), n.p. The section, titled ‘General Theater Inspection’ lists 75 zarzuela performances out of 883 indoor theatre events. The Anuario Estadı´stico de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires: G. Kraft, 1896), pp. 431–44, which covers the year 1895, provides numerical data on performance genre, price, and audience attendance of all theatres in the city. That year, theatres supported 8496 performances and 5043 were categorised as zarzuelas. Seven of the city’s fifteen theatres specialised in this genre, along with several other categories of entertainment, such as operas and comic operas; comedies and dramas; comedies and dramas in Italian; vaudeville comedies and dramas in French; concerts, dances, and acrobatic shows. I provide an in-depth view of the audience demography in Kristen McCleary ‘Mass, Popular, and Elite Culture? The Spanish Zarzuela in Buenos Aires, 1890–1900’, Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, 21 (2002), 9–10. 14. Moya, in Cousins and Strangers, shows that immigrants from the region of Galicia in Spain would at times account for as much as fifty-four per cent of all Spanish immigrants. The dominance of Galicians was reflected by the fact that a nickname for all Spaniards in Argentina is ‘gallego’, the Spanish word for ‘Galician’, p. 15. 15. Enrique Garcı́a Velloso describes the eleven zarzuela companies performing in Buenos Aires in Memorias de un hombre de teatro (Buenos Aires: G. Kraft, 1942), p. 61. For population, see James Scobie, Argentina: A City and a Nation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964) pp. 33–5. In 1869, the nation had four million inhabitants. The population doubled this size by 1895. In the decades before World War I, Italians made up fifty-five per cent of the population and Spaniards counted for twenty-six per cent. 20 Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film 0(0) 16. Janet Sturman writes that La Verbena de la Paloma was a hit throughout the Americas in 1894, playing in Spain, Mexico, Chile, and Argentina, Zarzuela Spanish Operetta, American Stage (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000) p. 40. Cenedith Herrera Atehortúa also shows that La Verbena was performed in Colombia in ‘Zarzuela en Medellı́n: El caso de la compañı́a hispanoamericana Dalmau Ughetti’, Revista Historia y Sociedad, 20 (2011), 133–50. The company’s twenty five-play repertoire is listed by play title, pp. 138–40. This allows me to compare zarzuelas performed in Medellı́n with the more than two hundred zarzuela titles listed in the Anuario estadı´stico de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires for the year 1894 (Buenos Aires: G. Kraft, 1895), pp. 383–4. 17. El Correo Español, 20 and 22 February 1895, p. 2. 18. Important recent works include Young, Music Theater and Popular Nationalism; Lamas, ‘Zarzuela: High Art, Popular Culture and Music Theatre’, in Marı́a M. Delgado and David T. Gies (eds), A History of Theatre in Spain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 193–210; Christopher Webber, The Zarzuela Companion (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2002) and Weber’s website: http://www.zarzuela.net/hpage.htm. 19. Sturman’s Zarzuela Spanish Operetta is one of the few monographs to examine the zarzuela in the Americas. Sturman is mainly interested in New York, Cuba, and Mexico. For South America, she only discusses Santiago in any detail, relying almost entirely on one source, Eugenio Pereira Salas’ Historia de la música en Chile (1850– 1900) (Santiago: Universidad de Chile, 1957). Her references to Argentina come from music histories rather than theatre histories, pp. 25 and 174. She references Vicente Gesualdo, Historia de la música en la Argentina (Buenos Aires: Editorial Beta, S.R.L., 1971) and Carlos Vega, Panorama de la música popular Argentina, con un ensayo sobre la ciencia del folklore (Argentina: Instituto Nacional de Musicologı́a ‘Carlos Vega’, Universidad Nacional de San Juan, 1998). 20. Susan Thomas, Cuban Zarzuela: Performing Race and Gender on Havana’s Lyric Stage (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2009), p. 1. Thomas’ study focuses on the twentieth century with very little attention to the nineteenth century. 21. My article ‘Mass, Popular, and Elite Culture?’ is the only scholarship in either Spanish or English that focuses explicitly on the zarzuela in Argentina. 22. Nothing similar to the papers of Manuel Areu, for example, which exist in Mexico has been found in Argentine archives. Sturman describes this source in Spanish Operetta, pp. 35–40. See also Sally Bissell, ‘Manuel Areu and the Nineteenth-Century Zarzuela in Mexico and Cuba’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Iowa, 1987. The University of California, Berkeley, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the University of South Florida, Tampa, all have collections of zarzuela librettos. 23. Surprisingly, there has been a spate of publications on the zarzuela in areas that were peripheral to urban centres. Herrera Atehortú focuses on one acting troupe in ‘Zarzuela en Medellı́n’, and Mario Roger Quijano Axle brings in Southern Mexico in ‘Peregrina, que, dejaste tus lugares: La zarzuela en Yucatán (1857–1921): Presencia, desarrollo, y producción regional’, Revista de Musicologı´a 32.1 (2009), 265–80. 24. The popularity, diversity, and adaptability of cumbia music as a ‘non-hegemonic’ cultural expression is expressed in its rapid growth and expansive geographic reach moving from Colombia, where it originated, to Peru, Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay, and the United States. Immigration networks rather than corporate sponsorship have allowed the genre to maintain close connections to and express the interests and concerns of Nation, Identity and Performance 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 21 migrants. See Fernández L’Hoeste and Pablo Vila (eds). Cumbia! Scenes of a Migrant Latin American Music Genre (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2013) for an overview of this genre of music. Young, Music Theater and Popular Nationalism in Spain, p. 6. Rafael Lamas, ‘Zarzuela: High Art, Popular Culture and Music Theatre’, in Marı́a M. Delgado and David T. Gies (eds), A History of Theatre in Spain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 193–210, 194. Teodoro Klein, El Actor en El Rio de la Plata: de Casacuberta a los Podestá (Buenos Aires: Asociación Argentina de Actores, 1984); Alicia Aisemberg, ‘Pablo Podestá: trapecista, sainetero y actor de ‘‘teatro serio’’’ in Osvaldo Pellettieri (ed.), De Totó a Sandrini: del cómico italiano al ‘actor nacional’ argentino (Buenos Aires: Galerna, 2001), pp. 75–88. On the Philippines, see Doreen Fernández, Essays on Philippine Theater History: Palabas (Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1996), pp. 74–6. Alfred J. López, Jose´ Martı´: A Revolutionary Life (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014), pp. 38–42. John Charles Chasteen, National Rhythms, African Roots: The Deep History of Latin American Popular Dance (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2004), p. 72. López, Jose´ Martı´, pp. 38–44. In Argentina, regulations consistently targeted the public nature of theatre houses where crowds of people were gathering on the streets outside of theatres. These regulations targeted the unorganised and illegal practice of reselling theatre tickets. In the 1880s, theatres were also the focus of a municipal campaign to avoid disastrous conflagrations that had taken place in US and European theatres. The fear of political unrest in theatres also focused on politics as well as crowd control. The first censorship law generated in Argentina came as a result of political unrest due to a depiction of contemporaneous political events in 1876. The play, El sombrero de don Adolfo, ushered in a statute which was only repealed in 1903, that made it illegal to criticise a politician on the nation’s stages. I highlight the key plays which set this legislation into practice in Kristen McCleary, Culture and Commerce: An Urban History of Theater in Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1890–1920, Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 2002. Bissell, Manuel Areu, p. 64. She talks of his trip to Buenos Aires and the debut of Areu’s composition there in 1889, p. 131. Sturman overemphasises the role of Havana in disseminating zarzuelas throughout the Americas, since she includes very little research on Argentina. She writes, ‘Virtually all zarzuela troupes on their way to South and Central America scheduled a stop in Cuba’, Zarzuela: Spanish Operetta, p. 47. Companies headed to South America did not stop in Cuba. Due to the prevalence of Italian immigrants, many Italian-owned liners, like the SS Sirio, an Italian merchant steamer that was shipwrecked in 1906, started in Genoa, Italy, with stops in Barcelona and Cádiz, Spain, before making port calls in Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina. A detour to Cuba would make no sense on this route. Paul Butel, The Atlantic (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), pp. 249–50. Moya, Cousins and Strangers, p. 1. Bissell, Manuel Areu, p. 4. Richard E. Boyer and Keith A. Davies, Urbanization in 19th-Century Latin America: Statistics and Sources (Los Angeles: University of California, Latin American Center, 1973), pp. 7, 23, 25, 42, 59–60. 22 Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film 0(0) 37. El Correo Español, 20 February 1895, p. 1. This letter was sent by Vico to the Spanish actor Javier de Burgos and was reprinted in the newspaper in Buenos Aires. 38. Willis Knapp Jones, Behind Spanish American Footlights (Austin and London: University of Texas Press, 1966), p. 32. 39. Enrique Garcı́a Velloso, Memorias de Un Hombre de Teatro (Buenos Aires: Guillermo Kraft, 1942), pp. 60–61. 40. El Correo Español reported on the first visit of Marı́a Guerrero to Argentina. Bringing her entire company from Spain’s Teatro Español, she was scheduled to leave on 5 May 1897 from Cádiz by steamship in order to perform at the Odeon Theatre on 22 May 1897, less than three weeks later, El Correo Español, 19–20 April 1897, p. 2. 41. López, Jose´ Martı´, p. 86. 42. Christopher Abel and Nissa Torrents (eds), Jose´ Martı´: Revolutionary democrat (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), p. 8. 43. El Correo Español, 19–20 April 1897, p. 2 and 29 April 1897, p. 2. 44. Margarita Barral Martı́nez, ‘Eugenio Montero Rı́os: Polı́tico del derecho y cacique de la restauración’, Dereito, 21:1 (2012), 267–86. 45. Marcelo Hugo Garabedian, ‘España, los españoles y la Argentina a través de la mirada de El Correo Español (1872–1905)’ in Garabedian, Sandra Szir, and Miranda Lida (eds), Prensa argentina siglo XIX: Imágenes, textos y contextos (Buenos Aires: Teseo, 2009), pp. 11–52. 46. Jones, Behind Spanish Footlights, p. 183. Beatriz Seibel in Historia del teatro argentino: Desde los rituals hasta 1930 (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 2002) identifies the first zarzuela companies as arriving in 1854, hired by Spanish merchants, p. 134. 47. Juárez was so well known in Argentina that the press usually omitted his first name. He was also revered for being one of the few actors to play Argentine roles adeptly. He retired to Madrid, where he opened a small grocery that was painted in Argentina’s national colours of blue and white and also named Argentina (Titto Livio Foppa, Diccionario Teatral Del Rio De La Plata (Buenos Aires: Argentores, 1962], pp. 386–7. Other actors who relocated permanently to Argentina include Juan Orejon and his son Emilio (Mariano G. Bosch, Historia del teatro en Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires: Establecimiento Tipográfico de El Comercio, 1910), pp. 418. Bosch dates the rise of the zarzuela by the hour in Buenos Aires to 1888. See Bosch, Historia de los orı´genes del teatro nacional argentino y la e´poca de Pablo Podestá (Buenos Aires: Solar/Hachette 1969), p. 26–7. 48. El Correo Español, 8 April 1890, p. 2. 49. El Correo Español, 18 April 1896, p. 2. Chateau Margaux was mentioned as one he performed in both Buenos Aires and Madrid. 50. El Correo Español, 24 April 1897, p. 2. 51. El Correo Español profiled the actress on 10 April 1890, p. 2. Bosch describes her as the best-known soprano in Buenos Aires, having worked in all of the theatres there, in Historia de los orı´genes del teatro nacional argentine, p. 28. 52. El Correo Español, 18 March 1895, p. 2. The performers of the zarzuela Chateau Margaux were called out for an encore. The soprano sang a song from Malága, Spain, with the following lyrics: ‘At the door of the theatre/I have hung a sign/With letters written in gold that say: I would die for Buenos Aires.’ 53. Foppa writes that López de Gomara was the first to receive twenty per cent of the box office in author’s rights fees for De paseo en Buenos Aires, which in twenty days Nation, Identity and Performance 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 23 produced forty-five thousand pesos, earning the author nine thousand pesos (p. 413). This statistic has been reprinted by many other publications, because the authors all reference Foppa. I have found contrary evidence that the Jordan Varela Company institutionalised this practice. See El Correo Español, 15 April 1890, p. 1. El Correo Español 15 April 1890, p. 1: ‘We applaud this resolution since there is no law in place which compels such a payment. What we need now is for other Spanish companies to do the same.’ Seibel provides a brief history of the law in Seibel (ed.) Antologı´a de obras de teatro argentino: desde sus orı´genes a la actualidad (Buenos Aires: Inteatro Editorial, 2011), vol. 7, pp. 19–20. El Correo Español, 19 March 1897, p. 2. Critics often dismissed popular theatre for a lack of artistry. This trend continues throughout the 1910s when Argentine-written comedies dominate the theatrical landscape. Luis Ordaz uses the term zarzuelismo criollo to refer to the same concept. See Ordaz (ed.), Afirmación de la escena criolla (Buenos Aires: EUDEBA, 1963). The connection between politics and playwrights in 1890 is mentioned by several authors. I draw in particular from Eva Golluscio de Montoya, ‘El primer levantamiento radical y el teatro popular del Rio de la Plata (1890)’, Gestos 1:2 (1986), 99–109 and Nel Diago, ‘Buenos Aires: la capital teatral de España, 1936–1939’, in Osvaldo Pellettieri (ed.), De Lope de Vega a Roberto Cossa: Teatro español, iberoamericano y argentino (Buenos Aires: Editorial Galerna, 1994), pp. 17–32. I also have reviewed El Correo Español for the dates around the revolution and the debut of López de Gomara’s play De paseo en Buenos Aires, which took place in Onrubia’s theatre on 28 April 1890. The Onrubia Theatre was covered frequently in El Correo Español while López de Gomara was at the newspaper’s helm. Anuario Estadı´stico, 1891. Most of the time those characterised as belonging to the zarzuela criolla genre were Argentines. López de Gomara was the one Spaniard who is credited with contributing to the genre. Ismael Moya refers to him as ‘half Argentine’ by the time he writes De paseo in 1890, in Ezequiel Soria Zarzuelista Criollo (Buenos Aires: Imprenta de la Universidad, 1938), p. 484. Moya, Ezequiel Soria, discusses the body of work that critiqued Juárez Celman, p. 484. Alonso, Between Revolution, p. 50. Vicente Martı́nez Cuitiño wrote El parque about the revolution in Artillery Park. On 6 January 1910, El Diario gave a detailed account of its being censored by municipal authorities. For an English translation of this Spanish zarzuela, see http://www.zarzuela.net/syn/ granvia.htm. La gran vı´a might be the most frequently adapted of all zarzuelas. Due to its loose structure around urban types, its themes were easily relatable and spoke to common contemporaneous themes of urban growth and modernisation. López de Gomara was the second director of the newspaper. His tenure covered 1880–90, the main years of focus of this article (Garabedian et al., Prensa Argentina, pp. 11–52). Garcı́a Velloso discusses the sisters in Memorias de Un Hombre de Teatro, p. 61. They were also profiled by El Correo Español, 20–21 April 1890, p. 2. An illustration of Dolores Millanes is on the cover of the magazine Madrid Comico, 6:155, 24 67. 68. 69. 70. Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film 0(0) February, 1886. On the cover she is described as a comic soprano and the following lines appearing under the illustration: ‘You have to see her in Caramelo so you can tell her, Señora, I am not going to heaven if you are not singing there!’ Even after Juárez Celman was ousted in July 1890, the offices of El Correo Español were ransacked (El Correo Español, 5 August 1890, p. 1). Golluscio de Montoya discusses the debates about censorship that emerged thirteen years later as the play was re-staged. Ultimately, these debates repealed the censorship law that had previously allowed for the protection of male political figures in the face of theatrical satire, ‘El primer levantamiento radical y el teatro popular del Rı́o de la Plata [1890]’, Gestos 1:2 (1986): 99–109; Justo S. López de Gomara, Valor cı´vico: apuntes de la revolución (26 27, 28, de Julio de 1890) (Buenos Aires: Imprenta de El Correo Español, 1890). Ironically, the urban reforms that were approved in Madrid in 1886 and which inspired this zarzuela did not get carried out until 1917. Young remarks that the only element that remained from the 1886 plan was the gran vı´a, or great boulevard, itself (Young, Music Theater, p. 33). In contrast, Buenos Aires’s mayor Torcuato de Alvear was actually implementing urban reforms that included a gran avenida, the May Avenue, at the same time the zarzuela was being performed in Buenos Aires in 1887. Alvear’s urban redesign resulted in the destruction of the Plaza Victoria and many streets in downtown Buenos Aires. I discuss an earlier adaptation of La gran vı´a, which was censored, in McCleary, ‘Mass, Popular, and Elite Culture?’, pp. 14–15. Alberto Navarro Viola, Anuarı´o Bibliografico de La República Argentina: Año VI, 1884 (Buenos Aires: M. Biedma, 1885), gave this report about López de Gomara’s first play: It is a pity that the author has only spent three hours on this, according to the play’s prologue. It lacks dramatic movement, originality and above all, local colour. It does not reflect Argentine customs; it just puts a few words in the mouths of so many gauchos who pronounce them in their own style. These verses are very different from the true gaucho verses contained in the Parnaso Argentino (p. 227) 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. The Parnaso Argentino was a collection of Argentine national poetry edited by José León Pagano and published annually. Justo S. López Gomara, Guia general de los españoles en la República Argentina (Buenos Aires: El Correo Español, 1884–85) contains the illustration ‘Typical Woman of Buenos’ and ‘Typical Woman of Andalucı́a’, p. 138. Julie M. Taylor, ‘Tango: Theme of Class and Nation’, Ethnomusicology 20:2 (1976), 273–91. For one version of the play, see Justo S. López de Gomara, ‘De paseo en Buenos Aires’, in Beatriz Seibel (ed.), Antologı´a de obras de teatro argentino: desde sus orı´genes a la actualidad (Buenos Aires: Inteatro Editorial, 2006), vol. 5, pp. 209–315. The play debuted on 28 April 1890. It was reviewed in most papers on 29 April 1890 and then reprinted in El Correo Español on 30 April 1890. Lucio V. Mansilla, An Excursion to the Ranquel Indians, 1870, trans. Mark McCaffrey (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997). El Correo Español, 8 May 1890, p. 2. It is reprinted in Lucio V. Mansilla, Mosaico: Charlas ine´ditas (Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblos, 1997), pp. 80–1. The reference to palm Nation, Identity and Performance 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 25 trees and to the bullfighter Frascuelo would have been understood by an Argentine audience since both were famous at the time. In 1885, Mayor Torcuato de Alvear made the controversial decision to import palm trees to the city’s Plaza de Mayo. The newspaper La República (25 October 1885, p.4), mentions that Eduardo Sojo’s one-act play, Don Quijote en Buenos Aires, was censored for making fun of Alvear. In the play, a character named Palmerı́n appears. The name is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the mayor’s affinity for palm trees. The character asks, ‘Who is talking about my palm trees? Who denies how beautiful and chic they are?’ (Sojo, Don Quijote en Buenos Aires in Seibel [ed.], Antologı´a de obras de teatro argentino: desde sus orı´genes a la actualidad (Buenos Aires: Inteatro Editorial, 2006), vol. 5, p. 45. Salvador Sánchez Povedano, better known as Frascuelo, was Spain’s most famous bullfighter. He died of pneumonia in March 1898. He is profiled in Cristina Viñes Millet, Figuras granadinas (Andalucı́a: El legado andalusı́, 1995), pp. 320–1. Mansilla, Mosaico, pp. 80–1. El Correo Español, 28 May 1890, p. 1 and 29 May 1890, p. 1. The latter article remarks that Argentina is a young country and there is no need to overly criticise its attempts to develop a national theatrical tradition. Despite the supposed economic success of De paseo en Buenos Aires, Marcela Garcı́a Sebastiani reports that López de Gomara was broke by 1891 and had to sell El Correo Español in ‘Justo López de Gomara: entre el periodismo, la cultura, y el negocio de la polı́tica de los españoles en la Argentina’, in Sebastiani (ed.), Patriotas entre naciones: elites emigrantes españolas en Argentina 1870– 1940 (Madrid: Editorial Complutense, 2010), pp. 83–125. I have found no similar statistical data on the Spanish zarzuela in Havana or Mexico City. El Correo Español, 25 May 1895, p. 1. The newspaper published an editorial that argues that Argentine independence was justified while that of Cuban independence was not. Coverage was constant through the 1890s. On 10 July 1893, for example, La Nación, contained an article on Cuban geography and then compared Cuban and Spanish women, p. 4. After the explosion of the USS Maine in February 1898, La Nación covered Cuba daily through August 1898. El Correo Español, 9 January 1895, p. 3. Manuel Falcon and Rafael Marı́a Liern, ‘Los de Cuba’, Teatro Español: Serie A (Madrid: Arregui y Aruej, 1894). El Correo Español, 5 April 1896, p. 2 May 25, or the May Revolution, commemorates the expulsion of the Spanish viceroy and the installation of the first governing body, or primera junta, in Argentina. July 9 commemorates the declaration of independence of the South American nations, which took place in Tucumán, Argentina, in 1816. An English traveler to Argentina described the specialisation of theatres: But, as in similar institutions in Buenos Aires, you must go on the proper day if you would see the Argentine distinguidos and those others that are popularly but curiously known as the ‘‘best people.’’ The rules with regard to this are stern and immutable. One place will be fashionable on Wednesdays, another on Saturdays, and so on. If you select a wrong day, you will see no one, and not knowing your Buenos Aires, you will condemn the town as a dull place, by which you will be liable to wrong it, William Henry Koebel, The Great South Land: The River Plate and Southern Brazil of Today (New York: Dodd Meade,1919), pp. 94–95. 26 Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film 0(0) 84. Ibid. 85. Lucio Vicente López, ‘El Himno Argentino’, Sud America, 5 May 1884, cited in Esteban Buch, O juremos con gloria morir: Historia de una e´pica de estado (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1994), p. 86. 86. This translation occurs in Gabriel Monserrat, El poema del himno nacional argentino: Estudio historial y crı´tico (Buenos Aires: Librerı́a del Colegio, 1932), pp. 7–8. The English translation of the problematic strophe was written by H. Ware and originally appeared in the Buenos Aires Herald on 9 May 1931. 87. Erika Loiacono, ‘España rendida a los pies de la Argentina. ‘El león de mármol de Juan Ferrari en la Exposición Continental de 1882’, XIV Jornadas Interescuelas/ Departamentos de Historia. Departamento de Historia de la Facultad de Filosofı´a y Letras (Mendoza: Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, 2013). 88. El Correo Español, 23 May 1891, p. 1 and 28 May 1891, p. 1. 89. Congreso Nacional, Camara de Diputados, 15 (14 July 1893), pp. 245–56. 90. Ibid., p. 254. 91. Matinees were especially prominent in Buenos Aires after 1900. 92. El Correo Español, 26 May 1895, p. 2 recounts a Spanish teacher being harassed in Entre Rios, Colon. El Correo Español, 27–28 May 1895, p. 1, discuss the problems in theatres on May 25. The paper reports that a second-generation Italian teacher shouted ‘Cuba libre’ [‘to a free Cuba’] at a Spanish teacher, at the well-known prep school in downtown Buenos Aires, the colegio nacional, 26 May 1895, p. 2. 93. Bosch, Historia de los orı´genes del teatro nacional argentino y la epoca de Pablo Podestá (Buenos Aires: Talleres Gráficos Argentinos, 1929), pp. 451–4. 94. El Correo Español, 27–28 May 1895, p. 1. 95. ‘Another scandal in the Rivadavia Theatre’, La Nación, 3 August 1894, p. 4. 96. El Correo Español, 18 August 1897, p. 2. 97. Bosch, Historia de los origenes del teatro nacional, p. 23. 98. Galina Bakhtiarova, ‘The Iconography of the Catalan Habanera: Indianos, Mulatas and Postmodern Emblems of Cultural Identity’, Music in Art, 35:1/2 (2010), 233–43. Aimée Guerrero Fernández, ‘Presencia Cubana en la Zarzuela Española’, Revista de Musicologı´a, 28:1 (2005), 443–54. Kristen McCleary is an Associate Professor of History at James Madison University. She specialises in the history of Latin America, popular culture, and urban entertainment. She has published work on popular theatre and theatre and masculinity in Argentina, fire safety and urban control, carnival and urbanisation in the Rio de la Plata region, among other topics. She is currently finishing her book ‘Life is a Cabaret?: Theater and the Staging of the Modern Argentina, 1880– 1920’, which examines the role that leisure-time entertainment plays in shaping the urban sphere and citizen there.