My favourite private retreat is »El Madrid de los Austrias«, the old centre of Spain’s capital, known as the Madrid of the Austrians. The name speaks to me, because my life is still centred on Salzburg but work-wise I’ve recently had a number of happy spells in Madrid. The district was named after the people who built it. The Habsburgs, who ruled Spain from the mid-16^th century to the late 17^th century, made Madrid the country’s capital and left their imprint on the city’s architecture and layout. A cultural golden age still visible today.

Los Austrias comprises the old city centre south of Gran Vía and close to the Teatro Real. What struck me at once was the social diversity of the area, with workers, white-collar, middle-management types and monied elites living shoulder-to-shoulder. The mix creates an atmosphere that Madrileños refer to as castizo, alluding to pride in one’s local traditions, an attachment to history and a certain bearing and code of manners. Sounds quite conservative but it’s not at all a throwback to the past. On the contrary.

Life here is suffused with the ambience of yesteryear while being very much rooted in the present day. One word that might capture the essence is the old-fashioned German concept of Würde, or dignity, the act of being considerate to oneself and to others – and it can be very direct. What I like about the Madrileños is their ability to argue frankly but without lasting bitterness. There’s a lot of noise and fury and five minutes later things have calmed down. There are lessons to be learnt from that. You become part of the fabric of the community quite quickly, get invited into homes and included in family goings-on almost as a matter of course. Family in Spain is viewed differently; it’s the unquestioned core of society and the principle is also applied to friendships. There’s something very relaxing about not having to continually question one’s relationships.

When I’m in Los Austrias, I don’t have any particular daily routine. Just by getting between the theatre and my flat I’m already down and dirty with the city. I wander, grab something at a pavement café or browse a second-hand shop for vinyl records, which can still be had here. The Gran Vía, with its chain outlets and tourist hordes, is just two blocks away, but you’d never know it.

Los Austrias is the old centre of Madrid, named after the Austrian Habsburgs, who resided in Madrid. The area forms the cradle of Christof Loy’s exploration of the world of Spanish operetta © Michal Novak 

 

Madrid was where my interest in the zarzuela began. The sub-genre emerged in the 17^th century not far from Madrid, spreading across the country and as far as South America. At its height it was a warm, intimate and vibrant form of folk theatre with over thirty theatres devoted to it in Barcelona alone in the 19^th century. My first zarzuela production was a huge event for me, conjuring up memories of being taken to operettas by my grandmother as a young boy. The intimate give-and-take and closeness and understandings between stage and audience had a big impact on me. All the more astonishing, then, that even Spaniards can’t really relate to zarzuela anymore.

Yet zarzuela is so much more than musical theatre. It’s subversive, it challenges social structures, toys with gender roles and mocks machismo and men’s presumptuous sense of entitlement. Women are usually smarter. That a lot of this pith and vigour has been buried is partly down to the Franco regime, which co-opted zarzuela as a touchstone to a falsified national pride, robbing it of its core. Zarzuela was reduced to catchy melodies that generated a warm feeling, yet it had always been so much more.

My offering aims to showcase the richness of the genre – not only the vibrancy but also the depth, the sorrow, the melancholy. I’m putting familiar material alongside long-neglected works, aiming at a kind of kaleidoscope. With our seven singers we’re not telling a linear story but rather embarking on an emotional journey of encounters, split-ups and rapprochments, as in Arthur Schnitzler’s »La Ronde«. I’ll also be saying a few words on some of the pieces in the hope that the audience glimpses a bit of the magic that makes zarzuela so special to me.