'¡Bruja, más que bruja!': When Fernando Fernán-Gómez Created a Zarzuela

Abstract

Zarzuela has always occupied a special and important place in the life of Spanish cinema, since its beginnings; curiously, in the silent film stage, coinciding with the splendor of lyrical theater, there are various adaptations of great titles of the genre to the big screen. But there is a zarzuela that was created for the cinema and not for its stage performance: ¡Bruja, más que bruja!

Created and directed in 1977 by one of our most versatile creators, Fernando Fernán-Gómez, together with the composer Carmelo Bernaola and the screenwriter Pedro Beltrán, it is a film that constitutes an unquestionable cinematographic milestone. Through this article we will obtain important information about the evolution of our zarzuela in relation to the history of Spanish musical cinema.