Most western countries had thriving native Light Opera traditions, though
Operetta is now dead as a living form, its richly nostalgic echoes becoming
increasingly faint.

Most of these traditions eventually got subsumed into the Broadway Musical
- which was effectively invented by Gilbert and Sullivan with their epochal
New York "Pirates of Penzance" - and the American Musical tradition is now
itself of course pretty well moribund artistically.

The Spanish Zarzuela hung on better than most, and will repay the interest
of anyone who warms to popular musical theatre of high quality.  Zarzuela
survived longer mainly because it is much more varied as to tone and
subject matter, and more substantial from the musical and literary
standpoint.

It is also firmly rooted in the aspiring musical nationalism of Spain.
What Smetana was to Czechoslovakia, Glinka to Russia, the great Zarzuela
composers of the 19th Century were to Spain, and this gives their work a
staying power which is perhaps lacking in the French, Viennese and English
Light Opera traditions.

Christopher Webber,  Blackheath, London,  UK.
http://www.nashwan.demon.co.uk/zarzuela.htm
"ZARZUELA!"