OperaLovers - Share the Passion

Features

Opera's hot in Chile

A report from a great opera house in Santiago

Recent

Santiago’s Teatro Municipal—one of the great opera houses of South America—celebrates its 150th anniversary this month. But the performance on 17 September 1857 of Verdi’s Ernani was by no means the first opera in Chile. The story, as in so many corners of the world, began with the arrival of an Italian troupe, which landed in Valparaíso in April 1830 and inaugurated the history of opera in Chile with a performance of Rossini’s L’inganno felice. Travelling inland from the port city towards the Andes, the company reached Santiago in June of that year, and there were many more visitors before the Teatro Municipal was opened. Or, rather, first Teatro Municipal: the theatre caught fire in 1870 during a concert by Carlotta Patti and was almost entirely destroyed. Its quick rebuilding and subsequent restorations—after the earthquake of 1906 and a second fire of 1927—kept the neo-classical features of the architect Francisco Brunet des Baines’s original plan, and today’s 1,460-seat auditorium retains its early elegance.

Chile’s operatic vassalage to Italy (as Opera Grove puts it) continued into the 20th century; Mascagni visited in 1911, conducting his Iris and other operas in Santiago and Valparaíso. Despite some very notable international casts, and such distinguished artistic directors as the Chilean tenor Ramón Vinay, in terms of repertory the Teatro Municipal was not very distinguishable from a provincial Italian house until the arrival in 1981 of the present general director, Andrés Rodríguez, who though only 27 at the time set about a steady artistic rejuvenation that continues to this day. One of his early achievements to was to entice the great pianist Claudio Arrau back to his homeland; Arrau had been reluctant to visit because of the Pinochet regime, but his eventual appearance in 1984 drew queues for a day-and-a-half, and was commemorated with the theatre’s small hall being renamed as the Sala Arrau.

The performance I saw of Tristan und Isolde on July 21 (the third production of this season, after Don Carlos and La Fille du régiment) was the latest stage in Rodríguez’s successful efforts to bolster the repertory, no easy task given a relatively conservative public. Although Wagner was first heard in Chile as long ago as 1885 (Lohengrin, in Italian), and Tristan reached Santiago in 1928 (also in Italian), it was not until Rodríguez’s arrival that the composer began to feature as a cornerstone of the repertory. Rodríguez programmed Tannhaüser in 1983, and Tristan was given in German in 1986; the Teatro Municipal has now done all ten works of the ‘Bayreuth canon’ (six plus the Ring). He has also introduced Jenufa, Wozzeck, Dialogues des Carmélites, Peter Grimes and Turn of the Screw to Chile. Duke Bluebeard’s Castle (planned for 2008), Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (2009) and Katya Kabanova (2010 or ’11) will also all be firsts for Chile. It’s an impressive achievement.