Alicante 1851 -  Madrid 1909

Ruperto Chapí orn in Villena, Alicante, came from a humble family background. Thanks to the family love of music, which had been passed down through several generations, he began his musical education at a very early age. He began his playing career in his hometown as a band musician and would later go on to the Conservatorio de Madrid. There, Ruperto and his friend Tomás Bretón studied with Arrieta.

His career as a composer was benefited by the award of a first prize for composition in 1872. This success enabled him to take up residence and study for four years in Rome and Paris. Although he was interested in music for the stage from an early age (at the age of twelve he had composed the zarzuela Estrella del Bosque), it was during this time that he managed to establish himself in the lyric-dramatic genre. In this period he composed and premiered his first opera, Abel y Cain, in Madrid, and this was followed by Las naves de Cortés and Vasco Núñez de Balboa. His first piece at the Teatro Real was La hija de Jefté, a work that the composer wrote during his stay abroad and which was premiered when he was only twenty-five years old.

When he returned to Spain he consolidated himself in the zarzuela genre and composed a sizeable number of works of which the majority are included in the standard repertoire of zarzuela companies: La Tempestad, La bruja, El rey que rabió, La zarina, El tambor de granaderos, Las bravías, La revoltosa, Las hijas de Zebedeo, El milagro de la Virgen, El duque de Gandía and Curro Vargas.

Vocal works

Among his compositions for stage there are some that aroused greater interest during the last century and are still often performed.

Música clásica was one of the works in the genre of Spanish operetta that won most acclaim from the public. A peculiarity of the storyline is that it exposes the problematic relationship between zarzuela and classical music, a controversy in which the composer was directly implicated. The work was premiered in 1880 at the Teatro Comedia de Madrid. The publication of the score has been planned to mark the occasion of the centenary of the composer’s death.

La tempestad was premiered in 1882 at the Teatro de la Zarzuela. It made a considerable impact because of the elaborate orchestral treatment. It was the most important zarzuela in the decade of the 1880s and helped to establish large-scale zarzuela.

La bruja, was premiered in 1887 at the Teatro de la Zarzuela de Madrid. Set in the popular atmosphere of 17th century Pamplona the work is closer to opera than zarzuela as regards its technical requirements and the length of the instrumental sections. Nevertheless, the large amount of comic numbers and scenes depicting customs and manners unquestionably gives it the characteristics of zarzuela. This may well be the vocal piece by the composer that displays the greatest Germanic influence, as much in the use of orchestral resources as in the technique used in the creation of the motifs.

Perhaps Las hijas de Zebedeo is not one of Chapi’s most transcendent works but it is extremely interesting for its content. This comic zarzuela in two acts was premiered in 1889 at the Teatro Maravillas in Madrid. The storyline revolves around the figure of Luisa whose ignorance and poor memory lead to an endless series of comic situations.

El rey que rabió, zarzuela in three acts and seven scenes, was premiered at the Teatro de la Zarzuela de Madrid in 1891. The libretto of this satire was accused in its time of being a plagiary of "Un roi de vacances". Chapí and his colleagues had to deal with this type of situation fairly often. Despite the controversy the premiere of the work was the biggest success of the year in the theatre world.

La revoltosa, zarzuela in one act which was premiered at the Teatro Apolo de Madrid in 1897, was an instant success and has continued running until the present day thanks to the adaptation of the musical discourse of the libretto.

[audio:http://blog.trito.es/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/la-revoltosa.mp3]

The incorporation of stylistic resources typical of the music listened to in Madrid at the end of the 19th century was a sure-fire guarantee of success.

El puñao de rosas was premiered at the Teatro Apolo de Madrid in 1902. With a storyline that focussed on the popular atmosphere in the mountains of Cordoba, it won instant acclaim from the public. One oddity was that the librettists decided to adapt it to the language and the pronunciation of this Andalusian region in order to help reconstruct the local atmosphere.

Instrumental works

Although his music for the stage reached a wider audience Chapí also composed symphonic music and cuatro cuartetos (four chamber quartets). The composer had to cope with the public’s lack of interest in symphonic music. Nevertheless, he made transcendental contributions to the development of symphonic music and received a positive reception from the foreign public. All his instrumental works have been published by the ICCMU during the last decade and have been the subject of some very interesting recording projects such as the Brodsky Quartet’s version of the four quartets.

The composer’s first instrumental work was the overture Zanzé written in 1865. This was followed by Fantasía Morisca (Corte de Granada) composed during the same period. He also wrote a symphonic poem that he called Escenas de capa y espada.

[audio:http://blog.trito.es/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/1-la-corte-de-granada-fantasia-morisca_introduccion.mp3][audio:http://blog.trito.es/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/2-la-corte-de-granada-fantasia-morisca_meditacion.mp3][audio:http://blog.trito.es/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/3-la-corte-de-granada-fantasia-morisca_serenata.mp3][audio:http://blog.trito.es/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/4-la-corte-de-granada-fantasia-morisca_final.mp3]

The Scherzo (Combate de Don Quijote contra las ovejas) composed between 1869 and 1870 was a descriptive piece written for the orchestra of the Circo Teatro de Price. Both Chapí and Bretón were members of this orchestra and it gave then the opportunity to try out some of their own works.

The Symphony in D was written in 1877 in Paris and later premiered in Madrid following the creation of  a concert society. The work was a study in orchestration written by the composer in his student days and has a clear structure based on the prevailing German models at that time.

[audio:http://blog.trito.es/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/1-sinfonia-en-readagio.mp3][audio:http://blog.trito.es/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/2-sinfonia-en-reandante-con-moto.mp3][audio:http://blog.trito.es/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/3-sinfonia-en-represto.mp3][audio:http://blog.trito.es/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/4-sinfonia-en-remolto-allegro-e-vivace.mp3]

Los gnomos de la Alhambra was premiered in 1891 by the orchestra of the concert society. This work was followed by La marcha de recepción in 1895.

The quartets were written between 1893 and 1897 in the keys of G mayor, F mayor, D mayor and B minor. At the time, a female string quartet, La Bretoniana, was devoted to popularising the chamber music of both Chapí and Bretón, a contemporary of Chapí. The public enjoyed comparing the productions of the two composers and taking sides with one or the other.

Some examples of Ruperto Chapí’s music can be heard in recordings made by the Orquestra de la Academia del Gran Teatro del Liceu in Barcelona. A clear and concise performance accompanied by essential liner notes in Catalan, Spanish and English.

Modern-day repercussions

Owing to a dispute over copyrights with the publisher Florencio Fiscowich (the publishers acted as middlemen between the theatres and the composers at that time), Chapí founded the Sociedad de Autores in 1899 together with other composers and librettists. Fiscowich’s aim was to have control of all the zarzuela librettos and scores and he did all in his power to achieve this goal. The composer’s flat refusal to cooperate prevented the editor from carrying out his business plan. It was then that Chapí decided it was necessary to set up an organisation that regulated composers and authors’ copyrights and he contributed his own personal store of works to put the idea into practice.

For those who are interested in learning more about the life and work of Ruperto Chapí, Luis G. Iberni has completed a detailed, basic analytical study of his figure. Another less disseminated work, but not for this reason any less interesting, is Miradas desde el Arte a la Música de Ruperto Chapí, the catalogue of the exposition held in homage to the composer in October 2008.

To mark the occasion of the centenary of the death of Ruperto Chapí, one of the most important composers in the ambit of Spanish music for the stage, several homages are being organised.

At last, the previously unpublished scores of some of the composer’s works that have been performed and included in recordings will see the light of day. As well as the recently published Scherzo, Fantasía Morisca, Polaca de Concierto, Marcha e himno de la hija de Jefte and Escenas de capa y espada and Música clásica (score and reduction) will be published. For the time being some other stage works and zarzuela reductions that performers would like to see available will remain in the pipeline.

The new recordings include live performances of El rey que rabió and Roger de Flor, on DVD and CD respectively. A CD of vocal and instrumental works recorded by the Ensamble de Madrid and a box set containing historic recordings of complete versions of zarzuelas by Chapí will also be released.

Lastly, there will be an itinerant exhibition dealing with the life and work of Chapí, which will visit Villena and Valencia among other places. The exhibition counts on musicological assessment by Javier Suarez Pajares and Victor Sanchez Sanchez.

Works