Think back for a moment and remember what you’ve experienced in Spain on your holidays. You can’t exactly expect to find Black Forest cherry gateaux on the menu while relaxing in the shade of the Alhambra in Granada. And, along the Costa del Sol, you would never cure mouth-watering Spanish Jàmon Serrano ham with air imported from the Black Forest either. Unthinkable! So it was only natural that at some point in the nineteenth century people were longing for their own music for the stage, when audiences in Madrid and Alicante were no longer thrilled by Verdi’s consumptive heroines or Rossini’s conventional vocal pirouettes. The upshot was a completely new form of operetta, the zarzuela, with a good dose of humor, fiery rhythms and soaked in simple—Spanish!—melodies.