Cuban Zarzuela: Performing Race and Gender on Havana's Lyric Stage
Susan Thomas's award-winning book offers the first comprehensive study of the Cuban zarzuela. Created by musicians and managers to meet a demand for family entertainment, the zarzuela revealed the emerging economic and cultural power of Cuba's white female bourgeoisie within the entertainment industry. Thomas explores zarzuela's function as a pedagogical tool that composers, librettists, and business managers hoped would control their troupes and audiences by presenting desirable and problematic images of both feminine and masculine identities. Focusing on character types such as the mulata, the negrito, and the ing?nue, Thomas uncovers the zarzuela's richly textured relationship to social constructs of race, class, and especially gender.
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