ABSTRACT
Meyerbeer’s L’Africaine was premiered in Madrid’s Teatro Real within a few months of its first performance at the Paris Opéra, quickly becoming one of the most frequently performed operas in the Spanish capital. When Manuel Fernández Caballero and Miguel Echegaray set out to write a spoof about the backstage goings-on in a wandering opera troupe, they chose this work as an emblem of the operatic world of the late 19th century. The score of El dúo de ‘La Africana’ incorporates several passages of Meyerbeer’s opera and contrasts them amusingly with music of folkloristic inspiration, reflecting the controversy between international and vernacular tendencies that raged in Spanish musical circles at the time.
