The Business of Art: Italian Influences in the Management and Organization of the Lyrical Opera in São Paulo

Abstract

In this article, we endeavored to characterize the historical context of the music management roles of the lyric theater: the artists and entrepreneurs who played a role in the history of the Municipal Theater of São Paulo during the first decades of the twentieth century. It is through the understanding of the concrete relationships between music and society we seek to bring to light a musicological/historical reading of the material bases of the phenomenon of the production and diffusion of the Brazilian lyric theater, consolidated in Brazil by the monopoly of agents of Italian opera companies. Among the theatrical agents who worked in Brazil, we highlight the figure of Walter Mocchi who worked for fifteen consecutive years during the golden age of the lyric theater of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Through a managerial vision comprehending the main Italian and Latin American theaters, Mocchi inaugurated a new theater management model that, in addition to intensifying the Italian monopoly of the opera market in Brazil, did not go unnoticed by local contemporary critics since it represented a limiting factor to the flourishing of composers, artists and of a national opera project.

Keywords

• Ópera lírica no Brasil. Gestão teatral em São Paulo. Indústria da ópera lírica.