Cosmopolitan Traditions

Abstract

Abstract This chapter turns to the spread of opera in Rio de Janeiro, and Italian opera in particular, to consider the genre as an integral part of a turn-of-the-20th-century cosmopolitan urban tradition, as well as a part of the local tradition. The chapter invites a shift from the focus on opera as a delimiter of social and national boundaries to operatic music as a border-crossing agent during an early period of globalization. It considers the process of opera’s dis-assemblage as a counterweight to the idea of an organic “musical work.” The chapter also explores the opera Il Guarany (1870) by Antônio Carlos Gomes as crucial in the process of transforming a cosmopolitan tradition into a local tradition, while addressing ways in which the selection of canons and the process of solidifying musical traditions intertwine.