Cuplé

Cuplé is the Spanish music-hall song that flourished from the 1890s to the 1930s: a short, theatrical number for a female singer, the cupletista, combining spoken-sung delivery, dance rhythms borrowed from the habanera, pasodoble or foxtrot, and texts ranging from sentiment to licensed suggestiveness. Born in the género ínfimo cabarets of Madrid and Barcelona, it was made respectable and internationally famous by *La Goya* and above all *Raquel Meller*, whose "La Violetera" and "El relicario" became standards; the form fed directly into the later copla.