Thanks to his lyrical sainete *La verbena de la Paloma* and operas such as *La Dolores* and *Los amantes de Teruel*, he played a very important role in Spanish music during the last third of the 19th century.
Opera was the central thread of Tomás Bretón’s career, although his intense activity also led him into other fields, such as conducting, serving as director of the Madrid Conservatory, and composing prolifically in areas that were still underdeveloped in Spain, such as symphonic and chamber music, as well as creating numerous zarzuelas in a wide variety of genres and styles. Nevertheless, opera was his true passion, and there was always a libretto on his desk that he was working on. There are numerous writings in which he defended the importance of national opera. Between 1885 and 1919, he authored pamphlets, lectures, and speeches that he delivered at the most important cultural forums of his time, such as the Academy of Fine Arts, the Ateneo de Madrid, the Círculo de Bellas Artes, and the Conservatory itself, of which he was director for more than twenty years. In these works, he consistently reiterated the same ideas, criticized the negligence and lack of interest of the musical institutions of his time, and proposed solutions to the problem of national opera.
