The impact of attending a zarzuela (Spanish operetta) youth performance on secondary students

Abstract

“Zarzuela” is a Spanish operetta, very popular from mid-19th century to mid-20th century. Its scripts were themed with topics of interest for working and middle urban classes, and its melodies were broadly inspired in the Spanish folklore. Despite broad prejudices derived from its political use during the post-civil war dictatorship (1939-1975), there are still many zarzuela lovers among the older generations and, as part of Spain’s cultural heritage, there is a dedicated national theatre in Madrid. We focused on the “Zarza” Project, an initiative started in 2017 to disseminate the genre among secondary school students as “zarzuela by young people, for young people”. For its productions, instead of top professional singers accompanied by the Zarzuela Theatre choir, dance company and orchestra, only 18 young actors and actresses aged 18-30, selected for each yearly production through a demanding casting, are hired, together with a small chamber orchestra made of also young musicians. From January to March 2023, we conducted a study to understand the educational impact on secondary school students of attending “Yo te querré” (“I will love you”), a production with songs by the composer Francisco Alonso (1887-1948) freely linked through an ad-hoc libretto written for an adolescent audience. The research is a continuation of a previous study (Rusinek & Rincón, 2010), which observed how the epistemological characteristics of the performing arts changed when schools attended performances in theaters, discussed what is the “curriculum of a concert”, and identified different approaches among teachers on the curriculum integration of attending live music performances. For this research we used qualitative methodology, looking for credibility through triangulation of data collecting techniques, informants, and observers. In this presentation we will analyse data collected through: interviews with 27 teachers, a focus group, a questionnaire completed by 49 teachers, interviews with the Theatre staff, and revision of materials publicly available (social networks, online interviews, and debates, and teaching materials). We will specifically discuss: a) teachers’ different approaches about preparation and follow-up of attending a musical theatre performance, and in general their conceptions about the curriculum integration of students’ aesthetic experiences and meaning making; and b) the educational impact of the performances, relating the dissemination goals envisioned by the Theatre director with the scholarly debates about the role of teachers as mediators between the arts and students’ lives.