The Teatro de S. Carlos: The Stage Arts in Portugal

The Teatro de São Carlos: Performing Arts in Portugal.

(Project financed by the FCT: ref. PTDC/EAT/70038/2006)

Summary

From its creation in 1793 to the end of the 1930s the Teatro de São Carlos was Lisbon's most significant venue dedicated to the performing arts — it hosted opera, ballet and concerts along with occasional other forms of entertainment — and a beacon for Portuguese musical culture. The theatre's rich performing activity shaped local traditions of musical composition and musicianship and left an indelible mark in other areas of contemporary cultural production, including literature, the theatre and the fine arts. Nineteenth-century cosmopolitan traditions of opera and dance, opened to Portuguese audiences a vista of modernity. And yet, the rich contribution of the São Carlos to the emergence of Portuguese modernity is still unexplored territory, and a theme absent in up-to-date accounts of our past. To bring the performed arts to the forefront of the historical consciousness of Portuguese nineteenth and twentieth-century culture is thus an essential project, one involving a long term research commitment and, given its multimedia nature, also significant multidisciplinary involvement. The present project will initiate this effort on two related fronts, setting important groundwork for a new history of the performed arts in Portugal, including opera and ballet, which we expect will also contribute significantly to a new historiography of nineteenth and early twentieth-century Portuguese culture and of European opera and dance in general.

Research activities to be carried out

• Initiate a series of critical editions of Portuguese opera (we propose to complete four in the first three years);

• Collect and digitalize important critical literature on opera and scattered operatic iconography (efforts in this area will concentrate on the study of five key periodic publications which contain valuable information concerning the presence of opera singers and the reception of operatic works in Portugal from the 1830s to the 1930s);

• Digitalize and catalogue major iconographic documents relating to the Teatro de São Carlos;

• Catalogue and digitalize early opera recordings and recordings of performances at the São Carlos held in the archives of RDP-2. All documentation will be integrated in the updated CESEM multimedia database, and made available online. The database, also in use for other CESEM projects, offers a powerful search and cross-check/correlation tool, and will allow easy accessibility to all materials.

Output objectives for the first three years

To contribute to a new historiography of opera in Portugal through:

• the publication of recent historical studies on the São Carlos ;

• the establishment of normative criteria of musical edition for future editorial work on Portuguese opera;

• the edition of operas to be published and made available for performance world-wide;

• a multidisciplinary forum of discussion on the historiography and methodology of opera among the performed arts;

conferences, symposia and seminars sponsored by the project will be interdisciplinary and international in scope and will significantly contribute to post-graduate studies and specialization in the area of critical edition of opera and dramatic music, and the historiography and critical study of performed arts.

Research team

Researcher responsible: David Cranmer E-mail: cranmer@netcabo.pt

Researchers: Alberto Pacheco, Gabriela Cruz, Luísa Cymbron, Paula Gomes Ribeiro, Paulo Ferreira de Castro

Research scholars: Cristina Cota, Luís Santos, Rui Pinto

Consultants: Roger Parker (King's College, London ), Susan Rutherford ( Manchester University , Manchester ), Alessandra Campana ( Tufts University , Boston )

Partner institutions

Teatro Nacional de São Carlos

Museu da Música

Articles related to the Teatro de S. Carlos

Revista Portuguesa de Musicologia

Vol. 1 (1991)

David Cranmer, « Intercâmbio entre Portugal e Espanha no Campo da Ópera entre 1793 e 1828», 205-10.

Vols. 4-5 (1994-1995)

Luísa Cymbron, « O Teatro de S. João do Porto: novos dados sobre o seu funcionamento (1834-1876)», 147-66.

Vols. 7-8 (1997-1998)

José-Augusto França, « A Ópera na vida cultural lisbonense do Romantismo», 199-202.

Vol. 10 (2000)

David Cranmer, « Operatic relations between Portugal and London during the Napoleonic period», 11-30.

Francesco Esposito, « Lisbona 1822: la vita musicale attraverso la stampa peridodica», 31-82.

Luísa Cymbron, « Entre o modelo italiano e o drama romântico – os compositores portugueses de meados do século XIX e a ópera»,  117-50.

Gabriela Gomes da Cruz, « L'Africaine 's savage pleasures: Operatic listening and the Portuguese historical imagination», 151-180.

Teresa Cascudo, «A década da invenção musical de Portugal (1890-1899)», 181-226.

Luís Raimundo, « Para uma leitura dramatúrgica e estilística de Serrana de Alfredo Keil», 227-74.

Vol. 11 (2001)

David Cranmer, « World premières at the Teatro de São Carlos during its first 50 years», 75-80.