João Marcelino Arroio

João Marcelino Arroio (Oporto, 1861 – Colares, 1930) was a Portuguese composer of Spanish descent whose work belongs to Lisbon at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He pursued a career in politics and taught at the Faculty of Law of the University of Coimbra, while music was for him an amateur pursuit, practised alongside his professional career.

His best-known work is the lyric drama in three acts Amore e Perdizione, based on the Portuguese novel Amor de Perdição by Camilo Castelo Branco. It premiered at the São Carlos Theatre in Lisbon in 1907 and was later translated into German as Liebe und Verderben for a performance in Hamburg in 1910. His second lyric drama, Leonora Telles, in four acts and with his own libretto, became known posthumously: the second act was performed in 1941, and the complete opera, in a Portuguese version, four years later.

Dramatically, his operas recall the nationalist works of his compatriots Keil and Ferreira Veiga. Stylistically, however, they sought to distance themselves from the Italian model dominant in Portugal through an intensive use of chromaticism, especially in Leonora Telles, which is closer to that of Wagner. Among his non-stage works are short pieces for piano, some published in Leipzig, and the symphonic poem Amor, premiered in Lisbon in 1913.