Pablo Sorozábal

Pablo Sorozábal Mariezcurrena began as a chorister and a violinist in the theatre and café orchestras of San Sebastián, and scholarships carried him to Leipzig and Berlin, where he acquired the orchestral technique that separates his scores from most of what was being written for the Spanish lyric stage. Katiuska established him in 1931; La del manojo de rosas, La tabernera del puerto and Black, el payaso followed, and from La tabernera came No puede ser, which passed into the international tenor repertoire. His plots turn on sharply observed urban types and the dance rhythms of the street, set with dramatic directness. He directed the Madrid Symphony Orchestra. His opera Juan José was not staged in his lifetime. He died in 1988. Born in 1897 into a working-class family, he studied in Madrid as well as in San Sebastián, and in Berlin chose Friedrich Koch for composition over Schönberg, whose theories did not persuade him; it was in Germany that he first conducted. Some twenty zarzuelas followed Katiuska, among them La del manojo de rosas of 1934 and La tabernera del puerto of 1936, and No puede ser reached a wide public through Plácido Domingo's singing of it in the Three Tenors concerts.