MANAUS, BRAZIL (dpa) – The ornate building and its imposing facade looks a bit out of place in the steamy damp heat of the town. Visitors to Manaus, though, can hardly avoid its pull.
In fact, anyone arriving unknowing in this settlement deep in Brazil’s Amazon forest can only regard the building and ask themselves how this huge opera house ever came to be build in the jungle.
Manaus owes its opera house to the rubber barons who amassed untold wealth in the late l9th century. It is scarcely imaginable that in the town plagued by fever as it was then, there was a music theatre to rival any in European cities.
Ensembles with choir and orchestra travelled from Europe with their props, stage decorations and costumes directly by boat, 1,600 kilometres inland to Manaus deep in the jungle where they performed for handsome wages.
Money was a plentiful commodity in Manaus then, and those who had it in abundance spent it in bundles. So it came about that the rubber barons invited the start tenor of the age, Enrico Caruso, to sing in a guest appearance – but seemingly without success. “There is no evidence to suggest that the Italian singer ever performed on the stage, reported historian Mario Ypiranga Monteiro some years ago.
The source of the fabulous riches is in the rainforest. Staring in the 1860s, poorly paid workers extracted latex, the milky-white resin of the rubber tree and the raw material for rubber. The Amazon region quickly became the market leader for the product and the plantation owners, suddenly rich, began to build themselves opulent villas in Manaus.
The material for their houses was imported from Europe. The harbour authority building was brought stone for stone from Scotland, the cast-iron covered market was brought by ship from France. And then, in 1882, the city fathers decided they would hire a Portuguese company to build a representative opera house. Work began in 1884.
Even before 1900, Manaus had its own electricity supply, a system of canals and the first trams in South America. Elegant department stores sold goods from Europe and the luxury restaurants rivalled those in Paris. Champagne consumption was at record levels and jewellers raked in the money.
On New Year’s Eve 1896, the cream of society set off in their carriages and finery to their new neo-classical opera house to listen to performances of arias in the tropical heat. Amilcare Ponchielli’s “La Gioconda”, selected as the first work to be performed in the opera house was only staged seven days later because of technical difficulties. An Italian ensemble had travelled to the first night.
“At the time, the house captivated the audience because of its perfect acoustics,” says Joao Pinheiro, a musician who plays in the orchestra. “But unfortunately there are only occasional performances these days.” Visitors can visit the opera house on days when there is nothing on and, for a small fee, there is a tour of the building, including its elegant lounges.
The main auditorium with its three circles exudes the atmosphere of the Belle Epoque. Gold is dominant on the walls and red on the chairs. The 15-metre-high stage curtain depicts the convergence of the Rio Negro and Solimoes rivers which join a few kilometres east of Manaus to become the Amazon. There are almost 700 seats, 250 of them in the stalls. “Air-conditioning provides for comfortable temperatures,” says Pinheiro.
It was the temperatures outside that prompted major renovations in 1929, 1962 and 1974. After three years of refurbishments, the Teatro Amazonas, as it is officially called, was finally reopened the last time in mid-March 1990. The work cost 14 million U.S. dollars and involved the complete renovation from the cupola, with its 36,000 ceramic tiles, to the cellar. In the process, 15 kilometres of cable were laid, experts installed state-of-the-art technology and art restorers touched up many of the paintings which constantly fall prey to the damp tropical climate.
Besides the weather, the opera house at Manaus has another enemy: termites. These voracious insects have caused extensive damage behind the panelling in the past, but hopefully no more after the authorities called in pest-control experts. They used 14,000 litres of poison and 1,440 gas cylinders to get rid of the large white ants and installed a system to automatically keep them at bay.
The opera house is invariably deserted when dusk falls on the Equator at about 6.30 p.m., with musical performances a rarity. Leila Leong, who works on the culture pages of the local newspaper, “Jornal do Commercio,” proudly lists the engagements: “This season, Puccini’s ‘La Boheme’, Massenet’s ‘Manon’ and Mozart’s ‘Magic Flute’ have already been performed.”
Yet international artistes seldom come. One exception was José Carreras who arrived in 1996 to help celebrate the opera’s centenary. The halcyon day of the Teatro Amazonas were over by the decline of the rubber boom at the start of World War I.
