Opera in Mexico and Latin America

Although Florencia en el Amazonas is the first opera by a Latin American composer to be staged by the Met—and the first Spanish-language work in nearly 100 years—opera has been produced and performed in Latin America for more than three centuries. The first known opera to appear in Latin America was a work by Spanish composer Tomás de Torrejón y Velasco (1644–1728) called La Púrpura de la Rosa (The Blood of the Rose), which premiered on October 19, 1701, in Lima, Peru, to commemorate the 18th birthday of King Philip V of Spain. (Opera thus arrived in Latin America several decades before it appeared in what is now the United States, when the ballad opera Flora was performed in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1735.) The opera’s libretto was written by Spanish dramatist and poet Pedro Calderón de la Barca, who adapted his own work from a previous opera by composer Juan Hidalgo that premiered in Madrid around 1660.

Manuel de Zumaya’s Partenope (1711) was the next opera to be performed in Latin America—and the first known opera by a non-European composer. Zumaya was born in New Spain (comprising modern-day Mexico), worked as chapel master in both Mexico City and Oaxaca, and was commissioned by the Viceroy of New Spain to write operas in the Italian style. Partenope was a three-act work performed in either Italian or Spanish; extant copies of the libretto include the text in both languages. The opera’s score, however, is believed to be lost, though others by the composer have survived. Throughout this period, most operas were performed in private for royals, statesmen, and other officials, and it was not until 1763 and 1773 that opera was viewed publicly in Lima and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, respectively.

Italian opera predominated across Latin America in the 18th and 19th centuries. For many elites and audiences living in Spain’s New World territories, championing the Italian style was a means both to emulate high European culture and to rebuff Spanish influence. The works of Gioachino Rossini—composer of Il Barbiere di Siviglia (1816), La Cenerentola (1817), and Armida (1817), among many others—were especially popular. In Mexico, Italian opera was promoted by the likes of Spanish tenor and impresario Manuel García, and some Latin American composers even produced Italian operas that were well received in Europe, the Brazilian Antônio Carlos Gomes (1836–96) foremost among them. His operas Il Guarany (1870), Fosca (1873, rev. 1878), Maria Tudor (1879), and Condor (1891) all premiered at Teatro alla Scala in Milan.

In Mexico specifically, the composition of operas lulled until the nation gained independence from Spain in 1810. The post-independence period saw a wellspring of composers turn to opera: José María Bustamante, composer of México Libre (1821); Manuel Covarrubias, composer of Reynaldo y Elina (1838); Rafael Palacios, composer of La Vendetta; Luis Baca, composer of Leonor and Giovanni di Castiglia (both never staged); Cenobio Paniagua y Vásques, composer of Catalina di Guisa (1859) and Pietro d’Avano (1863); Aniceto Ortega del Villar, composer of Guatimotzin (1871); Melesio Morales, composer of Romeo y Julieta (1863), Ildegonda (1866), Gino Corsini (1877), Cleopatra (1891), and Anita (ca. 1903); and Felipe de Jesús Villanueva Gutiérrez, composer of Keofar (1892). Moving into the 20th century, the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution (1910–20) only stimulated the surge of Mexican opera, which continues unabated to this day.