His best known works are comic zarzuela including El guitarrico, premiered 12 October 1900 at the Teatro de la Zarzuela, Madrid.
Before turning to zarzuela, Vives wrote a successful Catalan-language stage play, Jo no sabia que el món era així ("I didn't know the world was like this", 1929) and an ambitious four-act opera Artús (1897, Barcelona) based on Sir Walter Scott.
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A year later, his first zarzuela, the one-act (género chico) La primera del barrio, was produced at the Teatro de la Zarzuela in Madrid.
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He is best known for Doña Francisquita, which Christopher Webber has praised for its "easy lyricism, fluent orchestration and colourful evocation of 19th Century Madrid—not to mention its memorable vocal and choral writing" characterizes as "without doubt the best known and loved of all his works, one of the few zarzuelas which has 'travelled' abroad" .
The Spanish lyrics of Bayan Ko were originally written for the Severino Reyes zarzuela, Walang Sugat ("no wound").
He also started in the composition of music for zarzuelas and one of them, the Paraguayan zarzuela “Mburukuja”, with music of Neneco Norton, is still popular.
Although the vast majority of Romero's libretti were written with Guillermo Fernández-Shaw, he also collaborated with other librettists, most notably with José Tellaeche for Pablo Luna's 1941 zarzuela, Calatravas.
A review in Opera of its 2003 performance by the Tbilisi Opera and Ballet Theatre at the Rishon LeZion Spring Festival described it as "very much like a zarzuela in style with elements of commedia dell'arte".
Performances include film, classical, and modern music, such as The Godfather, The Lord of the Rings, Gladiator, a Spanish zarzuela movement, and "Barcelona" by Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballé.
In the zarzuela genre, her roles include Cecilia Valdés (Cecilia Valdés), Santa (Alma Llanera), Constance (El huésped del sevillano), and Aurora (Las leandras).
No puede ser (It cannot be) is an aria sung by Leandro (tenor) in the second act of the zarzuela, La tabernera del puerto, composed by Pablo Sorozábal to a libretto by Federico Romero and Guillermo Fernández-Shaw.
Paglipas ng Dilim ("After the Darkness") is a 1920 zarzuela – a Spanish lyric-dramatic genre – written in the Tagalog-language by Filipino playwright and novelist Precioso Palma.
He received a Latin Grammy Award for Tomás Bretón's zarzuela, La Dolores and was nominated for another Latin Grammy for Ruperto Chapí's Margarita la Tornera and a Grammy Award for El gato con botas, by Xavier Montsalvatge.
His first composition, Cariños de Madre was performed for a zarzuela at the Avenida Theatre, in 1917.
It has also been expanded and adapted into a forty-minute English-language zarzuela with a Madrid setting by Derek Barnes (2010), with text by Christopher Webber.