Prominent Spanish composer and professor Marisa Manchado Torres has been identified among the victims from the Toledo train collision, which took place on 28th October. A leading figure in contemporary music in Spain, Manchado Torres, 70, was also a key figure in music and feminism.
Manchado’s death was confirmed on Saturday by the Asociación Madrileña de Compositores y Compositoras (AMCC), an organisation of composers that she founded and was the first president. Manchado was travelling to the University of Seville to participate in an event organised by the Faculty of Education Sciences, dedicated to her life and music.
Born in Madrid in 1956, Manchado graduated from Conservatorio Superior de Música de Madrid, completing a postgraduate in Assisted Composition at Université París VIII-Saint Denis and a PhD in Musicology at Complutense University, Madrid. She also held a degree in Psychology.
Last April, the Spanish National Orchestra premiered Un mar de hielo, an orchestral suite based on her third opera La Regenta. This opera, with a libretto from poet Amelia Valcárcel, was commissioned by Teatro Real and a co-production with Teatro Español, winning a National Music Award in 2024.
Manchado was vice president for Music and Dance at INAEM (Ministerio de Cultura) between 2007–08. For 17 years, until 2018 when she retired, she was also deputy director at Teresa Berganza Conservatoire in Madrid. She taught at the Faculty of Education at Universidad Autónoma, between 2002–04, and in 2021 was designated honorary collaborator at the Musicology Department at Madrid’s Complutense University.
As a researcher, Manchado’s writings and publications focused on the relations of music, society, women and feminism. Her edited volume Música y Mujeres, Género y Poder (1998, new edition 2019) is an important contribution to scholarship on music and gender.
Her catalogue as a composer includes more than 150 works, including orchestral and chamber music, electronic music, vocal works and operas. In addition to La Regenta, two other operas stand out: El cristal de agua fría (1994), with a libretto by writer Rosa Montero, and Escenas de la vida cotidiana (1997), on a libretto by Elena Montaña and Gregorio Esteban. She was working on her fourth opera, Medea.
In a statement, the AMCC commented that Manchado’s legacy “goes far beyond her musical scores, having helped countless musicians and other women to occupy the place they deserved.”
