About the work
Padilla, o El asedio de Medina is an opera by Joaquín Espín y Guillén with a libretto by Gregorio Romero Larrañaga. On 9 July 1845 its first five numbers were performed at the Teatro del Circo in Madrid with tenor Enrico Tamberlick; the work was never staged in full.
Plot
The libretto dramatises the siege of Medina del Campo during the Castilian Revolt of the Comuneros of 1520–21; its characters include Doña María, Fonseca and Sandoval, supported by choruses of women and warriors.
Cultural significance
As a contribution to an independent Spanish national opera, Padilla was seen as a politically charged work in progressive 1840s Madrid. Its score was long considered lost until incomplete materials surfaced in 2017 among the papers of Miguel Salvador Carreras; a critical edition of the first act was published in 2024.