Federico Moreno Torroba

The multitalented Spanish musician Federico Moreno Torroba began his musical studies with his father, José Moreno Ballesteros, who was an organist and teacher at the National Conservatory of Music in Madrid. Moreno Torroba eventually attended the Conservatory, studying composition with Conrado del Campo. His earliest compositions were for orchestra, such as the Cuadros castellanos (c. 1920), but he soon moved to writing operas using Spanish styles and subject matter; in the mid-1920s he turned his attention to the zarzuela, the traditional form of Spanish comic opera. His firs...