Amazonia Theaters

The Amazon Rubber Boom (1879-1912) caused the economic and social transformation of Brazil’s Amazonia region. In Europe and the USA, the Industrial Revolution and the production of tires drove the high demand for rubber. Rubber could be tapped from trees in the Amazon rainforest, and mostly European entrepreneurs employed indigenous people and migrants from the Northeast to locate and extract it. The temporary commercial success led to the rise of a wealthy elite in the Amazonian cities. They imported all kinds of luxury items from Europe and provided their cities with street cars and electrical lighting. Theaters were also built as places to show off, and the ones in Manaus and in Belém are considered the best examples of this specific era. They still hold a prominent position in these cities, at the central square where in less-commercial cities usually a cathedral stands.

The Teatro Amazonas in Manaus is the pride of this city, the capital of Brazil’s Amazonas state. Entry to the theater as a tourist is easy nowadays – it’s open Tuesday til Sunday from 9 to 5, and they have a whole bunch of young guides eager to show people around. There seem to be no fixed hours for the tours, I was assigned an English-speaking guide all to myself when I arrived at 1.45 p.m. 

This theater has been lovingly restored in the 1990s and it is used again for all kinds of performances. They reverted the exterior back to its original pink colour …

In August 2018, I visited Manaus, the capital of the Brazilian state of Amazonas. In the late nineteenth century, when fortunes were being made during Brazil’s rubber boom, the Teatro Amazonas was constructed in Manaus, according to legend to attract Enrico Caruso to the middle of the world’s largest rainforest (although it’s doubtful that the great tenor performed there). Nonetheless, Werner Herzog opens his best movie, Fitzcarraldo, with the title character paddling to the opera house to hear Caruso. I endured an hour of modern dance, all the while thinking “please end,” to see the interior of the opera house, underneath its trompe-l'œil ceiling that is meant to evoke the view from beneath the Eiffel Tower. It was worth suffering the nearly hourlong performance to see the interior, especially since by waiting until the end and for all the other patrons to depart, I was able to take unobstructed photos.