Three degrees south of the equator and 900 miles up the Amazon River, in a run-down Brazilian port city stands one of the greatest opera houses in the world, built in 1896 and the inspiration for Werner Herzog’s film Fitzcarraldo.
Who knew? Certainly not I, until I practically bumped into the thing this week when I arrived for a three-month stint as a news correspondent to cover the upcoming World Cup. My first impression of the city was that it was “a little ghetto,” as my new friend John Temple put it. And he’s not exaggerating: poverty is high and throughout the downtown, crumbling colonial buildings line garbage-littered streets.
But when John wandered into the plaza of Largo de São Sebastião and saw the mighty opera house, he said he was “immediately amazed by the architecture, this one building in the whole city that is actually very nice.”
The theater was financed by a rubber boom in the late 1800s that allowed the local government to import iron from Scotland, chandeliers from France, and marble from Portugal. When the rubber boom ended in the 1920s, the opera house closed for a half-century.
For an article published in The Christian Science Monitor, I met with the man who helped bring the opera back to life, Roberto Braga, the state secretary of culture. We met at the European-style cafe inside the opera house. A professorial man with a trim grey beard and gravely voice, he told me how he’d restarted a number of festivals and attracted marquee performers.
The Teatro Amazonas is today subsidized by the federal government and is able to host a series of operas, symphonies, and other shows. In April, I paid 5 real (about $2.25) for a balcony seat for the Italian opera Lucia di Lammermoor, part of the annual Amazonas Opera Festival. The next Saturday I returned, eager for another air-conditioned getaway from the heat and pollution of this industrial city. I’ll be back this weekend for the French opera Carmen.
