Ruperto Chapí

In the town band of Villena, Ruperto Chapí y Lorente learned the wind instruments and, still in his teens, took over its direction — the least literary of beginnings for a composer who would end up defining musical theatre in Madrid. The Conservatory followed, and Emilio Arrieta's class, where Tomás Bretón was a fellow student; prizes and scholarships carried him to Rome, Milan and Paris. He wrote operas, symphonic poems, chamber music, songs and band pieces, but the centre of his work is zarzuela, in the full three-act form and in the one-act género chico: La tempestad, La bruja, El rey que rabió, El tambor de granaderos, La revoltosa, whose prelude and interludes have never left the concert repertoire. He was among the founders of the Spanish Society of Authors, created to defend the rights of composers and dramatists. He was born in 1851 and played flute and cornet in the Villena band from the age of nine, leaving for Madrid at sixteen, where harmony with Manuel Galiana preceded the scholarship of 1874 that sent him abroad. His catalogue runs to some hundred and fifty-five zarzuelas and six operas, among them Las hijas del Zebedeo of 1889, beside a symphony in D minor, four string quartets, a piano trio and the Fantasia morisca. He died in Madrid in 1909.