TEATRO AMAZONAS - OPERA

The theatre was built in four years and finished with difficulty on 31 December 1896, as a symbol of the splendour of the city during the rubber cycle. The first performance was given a week later, the opera La Gioconda by the Italian Amilcare Ponchielli.

The troupes, like the Russian ballets, came directly from the Old World, without even passing through Rio. After the crash of 1929, the theatre was abandoned and only opened for school parties. It was restored to its original condition in 1974 and 1990. Everything is original, except the velvet of the 701 seats, and the stage - some artists, like the great Enrico Caruso, are said to have burned the boards (even if this fact is not proven)... A leitmotif recurs, in the white and black mosaic of the forecourt, in the light and dark parquet floors, in the two men who surround the goddess Lara on the stage curtain: the Solimões with its beige waters meets the Rio Negro with its dark waters in Manaus and forms the Amazon. This curtain is the work of a Brazilian, Crespim do Amaral, who executed it in the workshops of the Cairpeson house in Paris, as well as the ceiling paintings, which represent... the Eiffel Tower seen from below. Between the colonnades, it's more academic: the pompous art celebrates the muses as well as the composer Antônio Carlos Gomes, author of the first Brazilian opera Il Guarany, and welcomed in triumph by the city and its inhabitants for the last months of his life, after years spent between Brazil and Italy. The paintings in the beautiful ballroom were made in Italy. Its floor is a marquetry of 12,000 pieces. The marble of the columns with English iron supports comes from Carrara; the chandeliers are Venetian. The masks that preside over the assembly, above the columns, are the contribution of wealthy families who had a private box in return. The expert Belisário Arce indicates that the mosaic tiles in the dome came from Alsace. They were replaced in 1984 by others, less bright, which retained the original design, inspired by the Brazilian flag.

The paving stones in the courtyard surrounding the theatre were originally made of rubber, so that the noise of footsteps would not disturb the performances. The courtyard is also the setting for the opening scene of Werner Herzog's film Fitzcarraldo, in which Klaus Kinski plays the role of an opera-crazy rubber baron who wants to build a building of comparable splendour near Iquitos, Peru, to bring Caruso to the theatre.