THE «INVENTION» OF AMERICA: ENCOUNTER SETTINGS ON THE LATIN AMERICAN LYRIC STAGE

Abstract

The basis for interpretation of Latin American settings of encounter sub jects for the lyric stage must differ fundamentally from interpretations of European settings, with the possible exception of Spain and Portu gal, which were culturally engaged in the Conquest. For Latin America, the Conquest remains an event of apocalyptic proportions that changed the core of its historical being. I could not possibly approach my sub ject by analyzing libretti from the standpoint of dramaturgical conven tion (as J?rgen Maehder has brilliantly done for Italian, French, and German settings).1 Where I to do so, I would be placing the Latin Ame rican settings as brands of European exoticism, thereby dismissing their cultural significance. Within European exoticism, the choice of exotic subjects remains a matter of cultural indifference, swapping heroes on the lyric stage as if they were cardboard pieces on a chessboard. From Maehder's study of European settings, and up to 1900, one may con clude that the intensification of ?otherness? as dramatic device may have dictated the choice of American subjects. For Latin American set tings, an interpretation requires the framework of history and an under standing of how Europe conjured up its image of America; how ?for Eu rope? America became a fictive place; and what were the consequences of this fiction for the inner cultural dynamics within America, as it be came itself. In the myth-making scheme of history, reenactments of the Conquest in Latin America become part of the process of understand ing, parts of an inevitable cultural catharsis at specific historical times and places ? the late 18th and 19th centuries in Mexico and Peru ?