Italian operatic fantasies in Latin America

Abstract

This article locates the beginnings of operatic globalization in the years around 1830, following the scattered appearances of opera outside Europe in the eighteenth century, and before the vast international expansion of performances after 1850. Between the two, a potent fantasy of opera spreading throughout the world coincided with a widespread attention to touring groups in the Americas and elsewhere, communicated through the transcontinental circulation of newspapers. For the newly independent republics of South America, meanwhile, Italian opera also offered an opportunity to turn away from Spanish influence. As a result, however, this opera was not typically defined through its values of italianità, as would be the case later in the century. Instead, the music of Gioachino Rossini, and later Vincenzo Bellini, became bound up in intricate ways with local and international allegiances, as can be illustrated through comparison of the situation in Buenos Aires and Montevideo.