Hi Luis (and everyone)

This is a large and interesting question you pose. Mine is only one
voice amongst many on this group, and for every member there will be a
different opinion!

Two aspects (amongst many) strike me particularly.

(1) Thanks to Domingo's continued work and others, many major cities now
across the world are starting to get the chance to see complete
full-length zarzuelas, classics of the repertoire such as "Luisa
Fernanda", "Dona Francisquita" or "La del manojo de rosas", instead of
those Galas and Shows which - highly enjoyable though many of them are -
inevitably don't give audiences outside Spain a true sense of zarzuela's
unique qualities on the stage, which is where it was intended to be seen
and heard.

Slowly but surely, such zarzuela classics are making their way into the
"mainstream" operatic repertoire. This is good news.

(2) On the other hand, the failure to translate the zarzuelas into local
vernacular, but to perform them in Spanish, means that many of the
genero chico masterpieces (such as "La revoltosa" and "La verbena de la
Paloma") which lie at the heart of zarzuela prove less attractive to
foreign audiences, because of their larger amount of necessary spoken
dialogue they contain.

The result of this is that as zarzuela becomes seen and known abroad
many audiences believe it is just another variant of operetta, which of
course it is not. I believe that interest in growing, but in a smaller
number of works than is ideal for a true appreciation of the richness of
the genre. I also think that good translations are the key to the global
spread of zarzuela, especially for the genero chico masterpieces.

It is perfectly usual to perform "Die Fledermaus" or "La Belle Helene"
in the language of its audience, and exactly the same should be the case
with "La verbena de la Paloma".
--
Christopher Webber, Blackheath, London, UK
http://www.zarzuela.net
"ZARZUELA!" The Spanish Music Site