Sebastian Yradier

La Paloma is the second-most-famous melody written by the Spanish composer Sebastian Yradier (1809-1865). The more famous piece was El Arreglito, which became the famous Habanera from Georges Bizet's opera Carmen in the 1860s. Bizet appropriated what he took to be a folk tune from a collection of Spanish melodies, and was later shocked to discover that he had recycled a work by a living composer! The habanera, or Havana song, is an early Spanish-American form, later associated with the tango, in which Spanish travelers sung of their romantic encounters in the New World.

Notes by Roy Wiseman