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Cuban Zarzuela: Performing Race and Gender on Havana's Lyric Stage
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Cuban Zarzuela: Performing Race and Gender on Havana's Lyric Stage Hardcover - 2008

by Susan Thomas


From the publisher

On September 29, 1927, Cuban soprano Rita Montaner walked onto the stage of Havana's Teatro Regina. The cross-dressed actress sang the premiere of Eliseo Grenet's tango-congo, "Ay Mam Ins" and cemented the song as a classic in the Cuban repertoire. More importantly, her performance heralded the birth of the Cuban zarzuela, a Spanish-language light opera with spoken dialogue that originated in Spain but transformed popular entertainment in Cuba.

Susan Thomas's award-winning book offers the first comprehensive study of the Cuban zarzuela. Created by musicians and managers to meet a demand for family entertainment, the zarzuela revealed the emerging economic and cultural power of Cuba's white female bourgeoisie within the entertainment industry. Thomas explores zarzuela's function as a pedagogical tool that composers, librettists, and business managers hoped would control their troupes and audiences by presenting desirable and problematic images of both feminine and masculine identities. Focusing on character types such as the mulata, the negrito, and the ingnue, Thomas uncovers the zarzuela's richly textured relationship to social constructs of race, class, and especially gender.

Details

  • Title Cuban Zarzuela: Performing Race and Gender on Havana's Lyric Stage
  • Author Susan Thomas
  • Binding Hardcover
  • Pages 264
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher University of Illinois Press
  • Date July 28, 2008
  • Illustrated Yes
  • Features Bibliography, Illustrated, Index
  • ISBN 9780252033315 / 0252033310
  • Weight 1.2 lbs (0.54 kg)
  • Dimensions 9.1 x 6.1 x 1 in (23.11 x 15.49 x 2.54 cm)
  • Themes
    • Interdisciplinary Studies: Hispanic/Latino Studies
  • Library of Congress subjects Music and race, Zarzuela - Cuba - Havana
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 2007046796
  • Dewey Decimal Code 782.120

Media reviews

Citations

  • Choice, 04/01/2009, Page 0
  • Chronicle of Higher Education, 12/12/2008, Page 25

About the author

Susan Thomas is a professor of musicology and Director of the American Music Research Center at the University of Colorado Boulder.