Tres horas antes del día (La marchenera)

La marchenera reached the Teatro Zarzuela in Madrid in 1928, and Federico Moreno Torroba wrote it in a deliberately Andalusian voice, with the Seville of the eighteenth century as its setting. This romanza belongs to the soprano and to the hours before dawn — three hours before the day, in the phrase that gives it its name — and its long spun lines are the reason the number left the theatre and entered the recital repertoire, where it has stayed.