Amazonian Opulence

In Daniel Catán’s opera, the passengers aboard the steamboat El Dorado come from far and wide, but they all have the same destination: the opera house in Manaus. Although the events of the opera are completely fictional and often fantastical, this detail is not. There is an opera house in the city of Manaus, Brazil, in the heart of the Amazon rainforest. The Teatro Amazonas is one of two theaters built in the Brazilian Amazon in the late 19th century. The other, the Teatro da Paz, is in Belém, the gateway to the Amazon River.  

It was during this period that Manaus experienced the “rubber boom,” when the extraction and commercialization of latex from rubber trees in the Amazon led to a huge influx of industry and investment in the region. Manaus, dubbed the “Paris of the Tropics,” became a major metropolitan area and cultural center; it was the first Brazilian city to have streetcars and the second to have electric lighting. This wave of modernization was also met with a desire to reflect European culture, which profoundly influenced the design and construction of the Manaus opera house.

Construction of the Teatro Amazonas began in 1884 and was modeled after the Palais Garnier in Paris by Italian architect Celestial S. Sacardim. The dome of the building features a giant mosaic composed of 36,000 glazed ceramic tiles from Alsace, and the inside boasts no fewer than 198 chandeliers, dozens of which are made of glass from Murano, Italy. The auditorium, which seats an audience of 700, looks up at a ceiling of decorative panels painted by Italian artist Domenico de Angelis that, while resembling an upward view of the Eiffel Tower, pay tribute to Brazilian opera composer Antônio Carlos Gomes. The theater’s ballroom, adorned with gold leaf and a floor of 12,000 interlocking wood panels, showcases a ceiling mural by de Angelis, in addition to a large painting of a scene from Gomes’s opera Il Guarany and a bust of the composer. The Brazilian artist Crispim do Amaral, meanwhile, decorated the theater’s curtain with an ornate painting representing the meeting of the Negro and Solimões rivers. The opera house opened in 1897 with a performance of Amilcare Ponchielli’s opera La Gioconda (1876).

The venue fell into disrepair in the 20th century but, after being designated a national historic landmark in 1966, was restored in 1974 and again in 1990. Regular performances resumed in 1997, and today the Teatro Amazonas is home to the renowned Amazonas Philharmonic. It also hosts the annual Festival Amazonas de Ópera, which has continued for 25 years. In 2023, the festival featured new works by contemporary Brazilian composers Francisco Mignone and João Gilherme Ripper alongside repertory staples by Gaetano Donizetti, Benjamin Britten, and Richard Wagner.