EFE (via 14ymedio), Barcelona, 9 December 2023 – Research, conducted by the musicologists Anna Costal, Joaquim Rabaseda and Josep Gay, has established the boom and the popularisation of habanera music as happening almost half a century before the Cuban War of Independence.
The research, collected together in the book, The first Habaneras in Catalonia (Rafael Dalmau, Editor), shows that “The habaneras passed through Madrid before arriving in Catalonia, and, coinciding with elation for the 1859 War of Africa, they became a gesture of national pride for the maintenance of Imperial Spain’s public image – the idea of a powerful kingdom, bellicose and colonial”.
The authors add that the habaneras also became a national symbol in Catalonia.
When, in 1881, the opera Carmen was performed in Barcelona for the first time, the main protagonist in the story grabbed the audience’s attention through her performing to the rhythm of the habanera.
Célestine Galli-Marié, the same mezzosporano who had premiered the opera six years earlier in Paris, enchanted the audience, and her powerful stage presence was made even greater by “a rhythm which Catalans had known, had sung, and had danced to for decades”, the musicologists write.
When, in 1881, the opera Carmen was performed in Barcelona for the first time, the main protagonist in the story grabbed the audience’s attention through her performing to the rhythm of the habanera
Although, in the collective imagination, the habanera had been connected with the loss of Cuba, they nevertheless became enormously popular in the mid
