I like to sincerely thank Ramón Pajares Box for providing the Bio and music.

This composer, a champion of the idea of a Spanish national opera, was born in Salamanca on December 29, 1850, just some months before Ruperto Chapí, the other great opera and zarzuela composer of his generation. As a boy he was weak, ill prone and unable to any manual skills, but he proved to have a clever intelligence and a great love for music. He learnt to play violin and at 14 he was already concertino in his hometown local theater. In 1865 his family moved to Madrid where he attended classes at Conservatory and played violin in a theater. He also composed pantomimes, quadrilles, overtures, dances, waltzes and other minor pieces. He became conductor of a circus orchestra and finished his studies at Madrid Conservatory where Emilio Arrieta taught him composition. In 1872 he won the First Prize in composition, together with his fellow student Chapí.

In 1874 he composed his first symphony and began composing many stage works, zarzuelas and an opera, Guzmán el Bueno, premiered in 1876. In 1880 he was awarded with a scholarship by the Academy of Fine Arts, which he employed in pursuing his musical studies in Rome, Venice, Vienna and Paris. While in scholarship he composed a second symphony, an oratorio, an opera, The lovers of Teruel, and the serenade In the Alhambra.

Upon his return to Spain, he became conductor of the Sociedad de Conciertos Orchestra, and began composing other operas and zarzuelas. From this time we have his most famous zarzuela, La Verbena de la Paloma, composed in only 19 days and which is now considered the most popular zarzuela ever; the opera La Dolores, without any Italian influence and whose Jota has passed into history as the most outstanding orchestral version of the native Aragon’s dance; and his orchestral suite Andalusia Scenes.