Francisco Asenjo Barbieri (Madrid, August 3, 1823 - Madrid, February 19, 1894) was a Spanish composer and musicologist who mainly wrote zarzuelas. Barbieri is honored as the creator of a typically Spanish musical theater.
He spent his childhood within the walls of the Teatro de la Cruz, where his maternal grandfather was the director. He attended the conservatory in Madrid, where he studied with Pedro Albéniz (piano), Baltasar Saldoni (singing), Pedro Broca (clarinet), and Ramón Carnicer i Batlle (composition).
He joined a band of the National Militia as a clarinetist and joined an Italian opera troupe for which he wrote the opera Il Buontempone, which, however, could not be premiered due to the troupe's financial failure; he worked as a critic and prompter at the Real Palacio theater, whose short-lived existence prevented its success. He founded a music magazine, La España musical, which sparked his interest in the emerging science of musicology, of which he was the first representative in Spain, together with Felipe Pedrell.
He participated in the controversies surrounding the “national opera” so popular in the 1840s and eventually joined the initiatives of musical theater in the Castilian language, which would lead to the spectacular revival of zarzuela, founding the Sociedad Artística together with Gaztambide, Ynzenga, Hernando, and Oudrid, which consolidated the genre.
In October 1856, after Emilio Arrieta joined the ensemble, the Teatro de la Zarzuela de Madrid was founded on Calle de Jovellanos.
During these years of his commitment to the theater, he wrote more than seventy zarzuelas. Among the most outstanding titles are: Gloria y Peluca (1850), Jugar con fuego (1851), Todos son raptos (1851), El marqués de Caravaca (1853), Los diamantes de la corona (1854), El sargento Federico (together with Gaztambide, 1855), Mis dos mujeres (1855), El diablo en el poder (1856), Un tesoro escondido (1861), Pan y toros (1864), El barberillo de Lavapiés (1874), and El señor Luis el tumbón (1891).
Barbieri also cultivated other musical genres. In 1884, he set the anthem Visca la pau to music with lyrics by the Catalan poet Apeles Mestres and the motet Versa est Luctum.
Barbieri wrote a large number of articles and collected a significant archive of musical documentation, which has been published in recent years by the Sociedad de Autores. He wrote the important prologue to Luis Carmena y Millán's Crónica de la ópera italiana en Madrid (1878), in which he laid the foundations for the history of the Italian genre in Madrid. Among other important musical documents, he published El cancionero de Palacio; he researched and reconstructed part of the biography of Antonio Eximeno, the most important Spanish musicologist, whose satirical and musicological novel Don Lazarillo Vizcardi he edited.
He was also a member of the Academy of Fine Arts when the music department of this institution was founded.
In 1892, he became a member of the Royal Spanish Academy; his acceptance speech was entitled “La música de la lengua castellana.” Until the end of his life, he advocated for a specifically Spanish music education at conservatories, especially in Madrid. He is buried in the shared mausoleum of Goya, Meléndez Valdés, Donoso, and Moratín in the Sacramental de San Isidro in the capital.