LATIN AMERICA AND ITALIAN OPERA: A PROCESS OF INTERACTION, 1810-1930

Author(s): John Rosselli

Source: Revista de Musicología, Vol. 16, No. 1, Del XV Congreso de la Sociedad Internacional de
Musicología: Culturas Musicales Del Mediterráneo y sus Ramificaciones: Vol. 1 (1993), pp. 139-145
Published by: Sociedad Española de Musicología (SEDEM)
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 LATIN AMERICA AND ITALIAN OPERA:
A PROCESS OF INTERACTION, 1810-1930

John Rosselli

?Latin America? is a modem concept. At the start of the nineteenth cen

tury, members of the Italian opera world knew about ?America? or ?the
Americas?. Down to Verdis' Alzira (1845) ?an American? in Italian ope
ra meant a red Indian ? of either North or South. Even the temperate
southern cone of South America (southern Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina,
Chile) became familiar to Italians only from about 1850, when some of
them began to emigrate there in substantial numbers. Transport tech
nology held back until mid-century both the development of the sou
thern cone as an exporter of food and raw materials and the onset of
mass immigration: both were made possible (on a large scale from the
late 1860s) by railways and efficient steamships. Meanwhile, the Ameri
cas in the first two-thirds of the century offered the growing opera bu
siness of both Italy and France a series of risky but potentially profitable
opportunities.1
Early in the century, movement to and within the Americas had to
? coasts
be largely by water along the and rivers, and along separate
circuits, each connected with Europe, rather than across the western he
misphere as a whole. Changing political, economic and cultural condi
tions also influenced the spread of opera to the New World. The Penin
sular War (1808-14) drove the court of Portugal out to Brazil, and with
it an Italian opera establishment from wich individual singers later went
on to the River Plate. The Spanish revolution of 1823 drove out a pio
neering family group of singers centred on the basso buffo Michele Vac
cani; the 1848 revolutions were to have the same effect on some later

1 on my article
This paper is largely based ?The Opera Business and the Italian Immi
grant Community in Latin America 1820-1930: The Example of Buenos Aires?, in Past and
Present, no. 127, May 1990, p. 155-82, where references and further detail may be found.
It incorporates, however, some further research.

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 140 JOHN ROSSELLI

Italian singers, possibly for political but more likely for economic rea
sons (revolution tended to close or empty the theatres, and the econo
mic crisis of the 1848 was not fully overcome in the opera world until
1853). The dominance in New Orleans of a culturally French popula
tion opened markets for French opera.
Early arrivals (singers and instrumentalists) made
the voyage under
sail or by inefficient steamboats filthy with coal dust
and smoke. They
were nearly all Spanish, French and Italian. All three nationalities spe
cialised mainly in their own forms of opera, mainly comic, though in
the first quarter of the century Spanish and French musicians could be
found performing Italian comic opera (on at least one occasion given
in French), and some of the Spanish also performed French op?ra-co
mique. These early performances were mainly of excerpts given in con
cert form, interspersed with instrumental music; even ?complete? ope
ra performances (outside the court theatre at Rio de Janeiro) may have
?
been a compromise with the forces available witness a Rossini Otello
(Montevideo, 1830) inwhich two of the three tenor leads were taken by
a baritone and an alto castrato (and at Rio too a visiting Parisian, per
haps an unduly exacting witness, reported in 1828 that ?a detestable Ita
lian company, with a still more execrable orchestra, murder Rossini
three times a week.?)2
Those who ventured out to the New World in this period had the
choice of three or four circuits, only marginally overlapping. One in
cluded New York, some other cities of the north-eastern United States,
New Orleans and Havana, the journey between New York and the Car
ibbean being made either along the eastern seaboard by way of Charles
ton, South Carolina, or down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers with enga
gements at Cincinnati and St. Louis in particular. New Orleans was to
begin with a French stronghold, and Havana a mixed emporium for
groups of all three nationalities, but from 1833 Havana came under Ital
ian hegemony, and New Orleans too came to welcome Italian opera
without dropping its French connection.3
A second circuit, only partly documented, covered Central America,
with engagements in various Mexican towns and cities (Manuel Garcia
and his family were the pioneers here in 1827), as well as in Panama,
Costa Rica, and Guatemala. This could at times be extended to include

2
V. Jacquemont, Letters from India, London, 1834,1, p. 40-1. Jacquemont was a friend
and devotee of Giuditta Pasta during her best years at the Th??tre-Italien in Paris.
3
See G. C. D. Odell, Annals of the New York Stage, New York, 1927-49; J. S. Kendall,
The Golden Age of the New Orleans Theater, Baton Rouge, 1952; A. Carpentier, La m?sica
en Cuba, Mexico City, 1946; S. Ram?rez, La Habana art?stica: apuntes hist?ricos, Havana,
1891; L. R. Wolz, Opera in Cincinnati before the Zoo... 1801-1920, University of Cincinna
ti, Ph. D. dissertation, 1983.

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 LATIN AMERICA AND ITALIANOPERA: A PROCESS OF INTERACTION... 141

Lima (where the limited evidence shows overlap with Mexico) and a
partly separate circuit covering Caracas, Trinidad, and some of the An
tilles: an Italian company toured there in 1844, but there may have been
earlier ones.4 After the 1849 gold rush the Central American circuit was
a times extended to take in San Francisco. What operatic activity if any
went on between Lima and Panama seems to be unrecorded in the ac
cessible literature.
Brazil,Uruguay and Argentina formed a circuit on their own, almost
wholly separate from those already mentioned, as can be seen from the
lack of overlap in personnel with Havana and Caracas. As late as 1878,
a group of singers then in Havana could reach Rio and Buenos Aires
only by way of a European port (Liverpool, Le Havre, or Bordeaux).5 Be
sides the royal or imperial theatre at Rio, Brazil offered many engage
ments along the coasts (at Bel?m, S?o Luis, Natal, Recife, Salvador, Flo
rian?polis, P?rto Alegre, Pelotas, and Rio Grande do Sul, to give them
their modern names) and at times in the boom towns of Minas G?rais.
There were occasional Italian opera performances in upriver or inland
Argentine towns as early as 1822 (Mendoza) and 1833 (Tucum?n), but
? ?
in part because of the disorders of the Rosas era touring away from
Buenos Aires and Montevideo did not get fully under way until mid-cen
tury; late in the century Rosario, a largely Italian city, was to become
an important opera centre, with (by 1907) three opera houses.
This circuit could be extended into Chile, in spite of the difficulties
? ? or over
of travel by sea round the Horn notoriously stormy and An
dean pass where the altitude at times made travellers sick (the railway
did not go through until 1910); regular performances at Santiago, Val
paraiso and some other Chilean towns began relatively late, from 1844.
Finally, Chile linked up with Lima. The possibilities of long-range
were demonstrated as as 1829-33 by two Italian women
trouping early
singers, Teresa Schieroni and Margherita Garavaglia, of whom the first
had appeared in comic opera at Piacenza and Reggio Emilia and as fe
conda donna in opera seria at Modena in the off season, while the other
(a contralto musico, i.e. specialised in breeches parts) seems to have
? ?
been a novice. They appeared picking up extra singers on the way
at Buenos Aires, then Santiago and Valparaiso, sailed to Lima, probably
sang there and in Central America, and are next heard of giving a six
months' season of opera at Macao, the Portuguese settlement on the

4
See R. M.Stevenson, Music inMexico, New York, 1952; S. Ma??n, Historia del Tea
tro Principal de M?xico, Mexico City, 1932; C. Salas and E. Feo Calca?o, Sesquicentenario
de la ?pera en Caracas, Caracas, 1960; R. V?squez A., Historia de la m?sica en Guatema
la, Guatemala City, 1950. For the Italian company touring to Caracas and the Antilles, Tea
tri,Arti e Letteratura, Bologna, 5 Dee. 1844.
5
Gaceta Musical, Buenos Aires, 12 May 1878.

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142 JOHN ROSSELLI

coast of China. They had been preceded along this route by the gifted
violinist Giacomo Massoni, who pushed on from Macao to Calcutta,
Cape Town, and London, and their Uruguayan violinist-conductor Fe
derico Planel may have ended up in Mexico; a Planel French Opera
Company played San Francisco in 1853.6
These early arrivals seem to have been either young and little-known
musicians, or else better known ones who were nearing the end of their
career (e.g. Filippo Galli, Mexico City, 1831-36 or 38, Havana, 1839-40;
Henriette Sontag, died Mexico City 1854; Raffaele Mirate, Rio, Monte
video, Buenos Aires, 1859-60). A number of them came in family groups
or father
(typically a prima donna, her husband and her brother, father
in-law) of the kind that had taken opera buffa round Italy in the period
up to 1820-30; many settled as singers of local reputation, ultimately as
teachers. The 1848 revolutions brought to Havana an unusually gifted
company (Angela Bosio, Balbina Steffenone, Lorenzo Salvi, Ignazio Ma
rini, some of whom stayed there or in Central America until 1855) but
in the temperate southern cone, apart from the engagement of Enrico
Tamberlick and Emma La Grua for the specially lavish opening seasons
of the new opera houses at Montevideo and Buenos Aires (1856-7), no
Italian singers unequivocally of the first rank and in their prime arrived
until 1873.
In the first two-thirds of the century the Americas stood to Italian
singers and musicians in a straightforward colonial relationship, as ter
ritory to be exploited by young aspirants with few prospects at home
in countries to ? unless
(who might well settle the they migrated they
died whortly, as happened often enough) as well as by older professionals
anxious to make money before retiring. Opera itself was wholly an im
ported commodity. From about 1870, the relationship between the tem
perate southern cone and Italy became more complex, thanks to the
economic growth of the area and to the many Italians who emigrated
to it (making up about half the six million immigrants to Argentina be
tween 1871 and 1914). Itwas now possible to move rapidly between the
southern hemisphere and Europe: opera companies could exploit the
difference in the seasons, like the itinerant Italian harvest workers nick
named golondrinas (swallows). It was also possible to exploit South
America in a more rational manner, as an export field for the Italian op
era industry as a whole ? for publishers, impresari, composers, scene
designers as well as for performers; this effort culminated in an attempt
at setting up an Italo-South American cartel to control and manage op
era production and opera houses at both ends.

6
British Packet, Buenos Aires (transcripts kindly communicated by Maestro Juan Pe
dro Franze), 24 May, 21 June 1834; Works Progress Administration, The History of Opera
in San Francisco, San Francisco Theater Research, VII, San Francisco, 1938, p. 12-13.

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 LATIN AMERICA AND ITALIAN OPERA: A PROCESS OF INTERACTION... 143

Finally, the Italian immigrant community generated a great deal of

popular opera. This was almost wholly separate in personnel from the
seasons patronised by the Hispanic-descended ?lite; the audience too
could be described (in the early days of the best-known popular opera
- as consisting in part of ?butchers in
house, the Doria later Marconi),
shirtsleeves smoking tremendous Tuscan cigars and spitting right and
left.? From the population as a whole (of Hispanic as well as of Italian
descent) came a number of singers and musicians some of whom made
careers in Europe, generally under Italian-sounding names.
The newly thriving Italian opera seasons in Buenos Aires and Mon
tevideo, often preceded or followed by seasons at Rio and Santiago/Val
paraiso, went on almost uninterrupted from 1873 to 1915, and, with
modifications, up to 1930; they always involved some of the best singers
available anywhere; as a rule there were two competing seasons of the
highest pretensions in Buenos Aires (three in 1907-10), quite apart from
the popular performances already mentioned. These seasons were man
aged by locally based Italian impresari of unusual staying power (Ange
lo Pestalardo, Angelo Ferrari, Cesare Ciacchi, plus Ferraris' widow and
former assistants: these between them ran nearly all the main seasons
from 1848 to 1914). Stability went together with hot competition, as in
1888, when a ?war of Otellos? pitted Ferrari (who had the rights in the
new work) with the tenor Tamagno against Ciacchi (who was enabled
by the lack of Argentine copyright to get in first with the tenor Stagno).
In at least some of these seasons not only the soloists but the orches
tra, chorus, ballet, music staff, instrumental parts, stage crew, and scen
ery and costumes were supplied from Milan by the publishing houses of
Ricordi and Sonzogno and their associated agents. Giulio Ricordi cal
culated in 1889 that over the previous five years the Milan opera indus
?
try supporting some 3,000 people, 1,745 of them directly employed
?
had earned abroad Lire 251/2m, of which L.5m came from Buenos Ai
res and Rio, L. 41/2m from New York, L. 21/2m from Santiago, just over L.
2m from Montevideo, L. lm from Caracas, against L. 6m from Madrid
and L. 3m from Lisbon.7 Leading singers too considered Latin America
to be a gold mine, and were prepared to exploit it, for instance by sing
ing four times a week at a time (the 1900s-1910s) when few any longer
cared to do that in Europe; this was true of Titta Ruffo, while Hariclea
Darcl?e, the original Tosca, then in decline, on two successive days in
Santiago sang three performances a day (some of them, no doubt, in
one-act operas).
There was nothing new about the production methods of the man
? a rev
agement cartel launched in 1907 by Walter Mocchi (1870-1955)

7
Speech by Giulio Ricordi, 1889, in P. Gambiasi, La Scala, Milan, 4th ed., 1889, p. xiii
xviii.

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 144 JOHN ROSSELLI

olutionary socialist who later followed Mussolini into fascism, ? Son

zogno (who soon dropped out), Duke Uberto Visconti di Modrone (then
at the head of the La Scala management), and Charles S?guin, owner of
the new Teatro Coliseo in Buenos Aires; they were later joined by the
Brazilian impresario Faustino Da Rosa. The cartel was made up of two
interlocking companies, one based in Italy, where it controlled the Tea
?
tro Costanzi ? the leading Rome opera house, the other in Buenos
Aires, where it had administrative control of the new Teatro Col?n from
the start (1908) and artistic control from 1914. Its aim of building a the
atrical empire round which companies could circulate was only partly
realised. In Italy, its main achievement was 14 years' management of
the Costanzi by Mocchi's wife, the prima donna Emma Carelli, and some
uneven seasons at the San Carlo, Naples, and the Regio, Turin. In South
America it is said to have controlled by 1913 the chief theatres of Rio,
S?o Santiago, Montevideo
Paulo, and Rosario.8 The cartel's policy of
forming companies inMilan and sending them round this circuit looks
like not much more than a rationalisation of what had been going on
before, though Mocchi liked to call it an ?interoceanic entreprise.?
From 1915 itwas hampered by the war and then by movements in
Latin America in favour of local nationalism and of German opera
(wanted by recent inmigrants from central and eastern Europe) as well
as by the economic crisis that hit primary producers in the 1920s. Al
ready in 1921 the cartel had to make a compromise agreement with an
Argentinian rival, Cirilo Grassi D?az, that it would help to train Argen
tine artists, encourage ?Argentinism,? and support ?all musical tenden
cies. ? Seasons were shortened because of falling subscriptions.9 The late
twenties brought partial municipalisation of the Teatro Col?n and the
setting up of a permanent local chorus and orchestra, followed (after
world slump and local revolution) by fullmunicipalisation in 1931: from
then on the theatre was no longer to be run by impresari, seasons were
to be fully international, and nearly all supporting parts must be sung
by Argentine artists. Very similar changes took place at almost the same
time in Rioand Santiago.
Popular opera was rooted in the Italian communities of Buenos Ai
res and Montevideo, but its personnel could also take part in low-cost
touring companies, few of which are well documented (e.g. the Lam
bardi opera company, which toured Lima, Central America and Califor

8 -
A. Carelli, Emma Carelli, Rome, 1932, p. 149-57, 169-71, 175; ?Col?n Recuerdo tem
porada 1908?, in Revista art?stica de Buenos Aires, 31 Dec. 1908 (article by C. D'Orfmevil
le]).9
A ?convenio? among Grassi D?az, Mocchi and Da Rosa, 3 Oct. 1921, embodied the
new arrangements: Biblioteca del Museo del Teatro Col?n, Buenos Aires.

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 LATIN AMERICA AND ITALIAN OPERA: A PROCESS OF INTERACTION... 145

nia c. In Buenos
1899-19IO).10 Aires and perhaps elsewhere rapidly
mounted, semi-improvised productions came and went, drawing on a
shifting group of Italian singers and musicians, most of whom seem to
have been permanent residents though some went back to Italy, as well
as on local d?butant singers drawn mainly from the Italian immigrant
community (there were also Hispanics some of whom took Italian
names). One example among many is an 1898 La Gioconda that was put
on in three days because a tenor from Montevideo happened to be pass
ing through; itwas reported to have been a great success.
From the 1870s a number of Argentine-based singers went to Italy
to study and make a career, but in spite of the glowing reports sent home
the first reverse migrant really tomake a mark was the Basque-born ten
or Florencio Constantino, formerly a threshing-machine operator on the
pampa (Buenos Aires d?but 1895); he was followedby others ina steady
stream. In Mexico the soprano Angela Peralta (Mexican d?but 1860, Mi
lan 1862, mainly New World career 1865-83) seems to have been an iso
lated phenomenon in her own day.11 The explanation for the late date
at which Latin American countries started producing substantial num
bers of native musicians able to hold their own in Europe seems to have
been in part a lingering colonial mentality (which made local ?lites
value everything European at the expense of their fellow-citizens), in
part the time it took to establish a thriving locally rooted musical life
and teaching establishment.

10 no. 9, 1955, p.
J. Sixto Prieto, ?El Per? en la m?sica esc?nica?, in F?nix (Lima),
280-351 (see p. 307-8); F. T. Gallo, Lucky Rooster, New York, 1967, p. 19-27; D. L. Hixon,
Verdi in San Francisco, 1851-1899: a preliminary bibliography, San Francisco, 1980, p. 88.
11
Stevenson, Music inMexico, p. 201-3.

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