One of the most important successes in the history of zarzuela. This magnificent zarzuela by the Catalan maestro Amadeo Vives has been performed thousands of times.
This lyric comedy in three acts is one of the most famous zarzuelas in the so-called género grande, which means that it is sort of similar to an opera. Composed to a libretto by Federico Romero and Guillermo Fernández-Shaw, it was premiered in the Apolo Theatre in Madrid, on 17 October 1923.
The plot is based freely on the comedy "The Discreet Love", by the great Golden Age playwright Félix Lope de Vega, who in turn was inspired by one of the stories included in the "Decameron" by the 14th century Italian writer and humanist Giovanni Boccaccio.
Based on this, Vives composed music that impressively portray the atmosphere of a romantic and traditional Madrid, as the setting for a plot about love, requited or not. The most memorable pieces are probably the romance "We know where the fire is by the smoke" or "The Song of the Nightingale".
