Teatro Amazonas

The Teatro Amazonas or The Amazon Theatre is an opera house found in the middle of Manaus, within the Amazon Rainforest in Brazil. It is the site of the yearly Amazonas Opera Festival or the Festival Amazonas de Opera held in every month of April. It was constructed in the time of the Belle Epoque, the period when much wealth was created in the rubber boom. The construction of the Teatro Amazonas was first proposed in the year 1881 by Antonio Jose Fernandes Junior, an associate in the House of Representatives. His idea was to make Manaus among the most significant centres of civilization and to create a gem in the heart of the Amazon forest.

In the subsequent year, the State legislature granted some limited funding. However, this was deemed inadequate. In the year 1882, Jose Lustosa Paranagua, the president of the Province, granted a greater budget and started a contest for the arrangement of plans. By the year 1884, the construction was all set to start under an Italian architect Celestial Sacardim. He designed the theatre in Renaissance style in order to be uniquely artistic and to put in electric lighting.

The Teatro Amazonas is featured in Fitzcarraldo, a film directed by German director Werner Herzog in the year 1982. The opera-fanatic Brian Sweeney “Fitzcarraldo” Fitzgerald goes to the Teatro Amazonas opera house in order to listen to Enrico Caruso sing the Verdi’s Ernani at the start of the movie. He appears just at the last part of the opera and the interiors of the opera house were displayed in some scenes. While it is supposed that the opera house was built to draw Caruso to present at the opening, there are some uncertainties that he really did present there. Teatro Amazonas is features in a book entitled “A Company of Swans”, as well.

Teatro Amazonas