Opera in the Amazon (Redux)

• In Event: The International Amazon

Abstract

This paper explores the changing relations of culture and capital by focusing on one vivid object-example: the Teatro Amazonas, a much mythologized opera house in Manaus, Brazil. Built at the height of the Amazonian rubber boom of the late nineteenth century and designed to host touring companies from Europe, the theater served a variety of non-operatic purposes following the shift in rubber production to Asia and the decline of opera as the favored genre of the elite. As most accounts tell it, Manaus entered a long period of stagnation and cultural isolation that was only exacerbated in the late sixties, during the military dictatorship in Brazil, when the city became the site of a Free Trade Zone. Since 1997, however, a combination of state support and private sponsorship has allowed the Teatro Amazonas to host an annual opera festival, which originally involved importing productions and performers from elsewhere but now relies to a large extent on local labor and talent. After very briefly tracing the history of the opera house, the paper focuses on the creation of the opera festival and its role in a major expansion of the cultural infrastructure in Manaus. In doing so it also reflects on how a comparison between the activities of the opera house in the rubber boom era and its relatively recent renaissance can illuminate the role of the Amazon in shifting geographies of capital and cultural creation.

Author

• Sarah J Townsend, Pennsylvania State University/University Park