The Madrid of romance and customs shares a prominent role with the rural atmosphere of the pastureland of Extremadura in this successful zarzuela by the composer and maestro Federico Moreno Torroba.
This zarzuela, defined as a lyric comedy in three acts to a libretto by Guillermo Fernández-Shaw, premiered on 26 March 1932 in the Calderón Theatre in Madrid. It is very successful - it has been put on about 10,000 times in theatres all over the world.
"Luisa Fernanda" was the one of the artistic culminations of the zarzuela genre, as well as the beginning of a decline that would still produce interesting works, most of them by Moreno Torroba himself.
The plot revolves around the love affairs of the protagonists, but set in a historical context: the moments before and after the triumph of the Glorious Revolution in Spain, a revolution that dethroned Queen Isabella I of Spain in 1868 and gave way to the first Republic in Spain.
