Emilio Arrieta

Juan Pascual Antonio Arrieta Corera (Puente la Reina, Navarra, October 20, 1821-Madrid, February 11, 1894), known as Emilio Arrieta, was a Spanish composer, with a outstanding theatrical production and whose greatest contribution to Spanish music was his role in the consolidation of zarzuela as a genre.

Biography

The son of one of the leading families of Puente la Reina, in Navarra, he was orphaned as a child and moved and educated in Madrid with his sister Antonia, where he began his music studies. In 1839 his sister took him to Italy where he studied piano with Maestro Perelli and harmony with Mandancini, privately. In 1841 he entered the Milan Conservatory, thanks to the generosity of the Count of Litta, studying piano and harmony with the maestro Nicola Vaccai (between 1838 and 1846), finishing his degree with an extraordinary prize.

In Italy, in collaboration with the librettist Temistocle Solera, he composed his first opera: Ildegonda, premiered in 1846 with which he achieved great success, and won the prize for composition at La Scala in Milan. Back in Madrid, in 1846 he made himself known as a conductor at the Teatro del Circo, where he also premiered a symphony that same year. He met Elizabeth II at a palace party. The queen took him on as a singing teacher, naming him court composer three years later, and ordered the construction of a theater in the Royal Palace where Arrieta premiered his first opera in 1849 and later, his new operas The Conquest of Granada (with lyrics in Italian, also by Solera) in 1850 and Pergolesi in 1851.

Despite having had the support of the queen, after her overthrow, in 1868 he composed the music for the hymn by the writer Antonio García Gutiérrez, Down with the Bourbons!.

He was appointed professor of composition at the National School of Music in Madrid in 1857 and became director, succeeding Hilarión Eslava in 1868, which he held until his death in 1894. At this time he composed numerous works for to concerts, contests and academic events. Among his most outstanding students were Tomás Bretón and Ruperto Chapí.

When the zarzuela was reborn with the successes of Barbieri, Gaztambide and other authors, together with the closure of the Teatro del Real Palacio, made Arrieta feel seduced by the zarzuela, abandoning the opera and producing more than fifty.

In 1853 he premiered his first zarzuela at the Teatro del Circo, El domino azul and, thirty years later, his last, San Francisco de Sena. In total, he is the author of fifty titles, the most famous of which and the only one that remains in the usual repertoires today is Marina , with a libretto by Francisco Camprodón. Born as a zarzuela in 1855, he turned it into an opera that was premiered at the Teatro Real in Madrid in 1871.

In 1871 he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of Isabel la Católica and in 1873 he was appointed academic at the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts in the recently created music section. In 1986, 92 years after his death, he was nominated for a Goya Award in the Original Music section for the film El disputado voto del Sr. Cayo. The film lacks a soundtrack and the composition Marina it can be heard briefly in two sequences, long enough for the Academicians to consider it original enough to compete for the Goya.

Although Arrieta's style can be considered conservative, his works, rich in melodies, fluctuate between local references and the Italianism that he would never abandon.

Emilio Arrieta burial

Fernando Pérez Ollo, music critic, writes of Arrieta:

"His glory is based on his theatrical production and more specifically on the decisive role he played in consolidating zarzuela as a genre. That dominance of the Navarre master was possible by his melodic sense, in the traditional line of Bellini, rather than in the renovator and drama of Verdi, and by the technical resources—armonic and instrumental—that gave him his Italian formation. In this last aspect, Arrieta was superior to his peninsular colleagues. »

Caricatured by Cilla in Madrid (1880)

Celebration of the bicentenary of his birth

On the occasion of the 200th anniversary of his birth, various events were held in Pamplona and Puente La Reina from October 18 to 23, 2021. The final touch of the celebration was on December 30, 2021, with a concert dedicated to San Francisco de Sena, the last zarzuela composed by Arrieta.

Works (incomplete)

Operas

• 1846 - Ildegonda (in Italy; 1849 in Madrid).
• 1850 - The Conquest of Granada (The conquest of Granata in Italian).
• 1851 - Pergolesi.
• 1871 - Marina. (In three acts, adaptation of the zarzuela of the same name).

Amalia Ramírez en The daughter of Providence

Zarzuelas

• 1853 - The blue domino.
• 1853 - The grumete.
• 1853 - The Star of Madrid.
• 1854 - The royal hunt.
• 1854 - Of such a stick like a smelt.
• 1855 - War to Death.
• 1855 - Marina.
• 1856 - The daughter of Providence.
• 1856 - The sleepwalker.
• 1858 - The planet VenusFantastic zarzuela.
• 1858 - Azón Visconti.
• 1860 - The circasians.
• 1861 - The return of the Corsario.
• 1861 - Call and troop.
• 1862 - The London Tabernera.
• 1866 - The elve of Madrid.
• 1866 - The conjure.
• 1866 - A sarao and a soirée.
• 1870 - The submarine Potosi.
• 1879 - The Holy War.
• 1883 - San Franco de Sena