Cops and Robbers

The zarzuela Policías y ladrones is the last commission and premiere of the Teatro de la Zarzuela, although the list of contemporary lyrical works goes back to the eighties and nineties of the past century with a cycle for the old Sala Olimpia. In addition, this title joins a series of new productions by Spanish authors on the same stage of Plazuela de Jovellanos.

On this occasion Marco returns with a zarzuela, almost half a century since the premiere of Fuenteovejuna, by Moreno Buendía, with the aim of updating, in a certain way, the genre. For the composer this new production is “an artistic adventure that I believe was worth trying”, since it is about tackling a novel creative project, bringing political corruption to the stage with the intention of showing it as “a peculiar farce, without the gravity of a devastating critique, with the disparagement and lightness of an argument whose intrigue incorporates the tension of ‘suspense’ in a display of types, figures, hypothetical spears and plausible absurdities”.

This new zarzuela, with a tragicomic tone, inclined towards sarcastic skepticism, will be musically attractive; the one in charge of leading the orchestra will be José Ramón Encinar, a maestro who knows the country’s contemporary music like few others. And, according to the show’s own stage director, Carme Portaceli, this will be “like a kind of atonement, let’s see if, through irony, through a scenic language that allows us to represent the horror of this story, like a fire on the night of San Juan, we manage to create distance from that which weighs on us like a slab and embarrasses us every day: corruption”.