Page "Comic opera" Paragraph 14

Pedro Calderón de la Barca was the first playwright to adopt the term zarzuela for his work entitled El golfo de las sirenas (" The Gulf of the Sirens ", 1657 ).

Lope de Vega soon wrote a work titled La selva sin amor, drama con orquesta (" The Loveless Jungle, A Drama with Orchestra ").

The instruments orchestra was hidden from the audience, the actors sang in harmony, and the musical composition itself was intended to evoke an emotional response.

Some of these early pieces were lost, but Los celos hacen estrellas (" Jealousies Turn Into Stars ") by Juan Hidalgo and Juan Vélez, which premiered in 1672, survives and gives us some sense of what the genre was like in the 17th century.