Manuel Penella, El gato montés (1916)

Various places online call this a zarzuela, but in that case, the term has absolutely no meaning beyond simply "Spanish opera."  There's nothing unusual about this except the language: it's a standard tragic opera with no spoken dialogue.  Golly!

So there's a woman named Soléa, and she's in love with a toreador named Rafael.  Well, kind of.  She's giving it her best shot, but she's still REALLY in love with a bandit named Juanillo--el gato montés!  The wildcat!  He went to jail for killing a guy who was hitting on Soléa, but now he's escaped!  And he's back!  A gypsy fortune-teller warns Rafael not to fight or he'll die, but Juanillo goads him into a big fight where he tries to defeat six bulls.  But instead, he dies.  That was...not unpredictable.  Anyway, Soléa dies of sorrow, and Juanillo comes back to her, because now life has no meaning for him.  He refuses to leave when the law is coming for him and instead has his underling shoot and kill him.  The end.

I must say, I found this dramatically lacking.  It's a favorite of Plácido Domingo who--as you can see--plays Rafael, but I dunno.  The music is generally good, you can see the Spanish flavor, although it's a very open question whether I would if I didn't know it was Spanish.  But the story, eh.  The characters are very sketchily drawn, and in particular you really never get what Soléa's deal is.  I mean, maybe you do but her deal isn't very interesting.  I do not know!

During the bullfighting sequence, this production plays stock footage of bullfights.  I mean, okay.  The opera is about what it's about and there's no avoiding it.  Complaining about it is about as useful as complaining about the fox hunting scenes in Trollope novels.  But good lord, people, you REALLY do not need to rub it in like that.  You could easily underplay it, and you ought to, because you shouldn't give me time to really contemplate how FUCKING FUCKED UP it is for people to be torturing innocent animals for no goddamn reason.  Fuuuuck people suck.  And yet, even the ones who suck sometimes produce transcendental art.  What a contradiction!  And yet, I'm not sure that this particular opera is an example of that.  WHATEVZ.  I really just wanted to bump up my Spanish-language opera count, so mission accomplished.