MOVING LA VERBENA

Moving La Verbena draws on Madrid in 1894 and zarzuela, a form of music theatre rooted in the everyday lives of Spanish people.

The performance, inspired by La Verbena de la Paloma by Tomás Bretón, follows the movement, exchange, and transformation of musical ideas across places and generations. As Spaniards moved across the ocean, new music emerged from these displacements and encounters. These musical forms were not simply exported and reproduced; they were transformed by the people and cultures that received them.

That journey continues into the present, where artists such as Jorge Drexler, Liniker, Cesária Évora, Nathy Peluso, Stromae and Bad Bunny reveal a similar impulse in contemporary popular music. Their work turns the ordinary world - its cities, relationships, celebrations, struggles, identities and contradictions - into music that belongs to its own time.

Moving La Verbena considers zarzuela not simply as a historical form, but as a way of making music: immediate, popular, theatrical and deeply connected to everyday life.