Teatro Colón

Teatro Colón, Argentina's principal opera house, located in Buenos Aires. The Teatro Colón opened on 25 May 1908 with Verdi's Aïda under the baton of Luigi Mancinelli; it succeeded an 1857 house of the same name. Seating approximately four thousand people, the Teatro Colón is the biggest and most prominent opera house in Latin America and one of the major houses of the world. Fifty-eight premieres of Argentine operas have been staged there, among them Héctor Panizza's Aurora (1908), Felipe Boero's El matrero (1929), Juan José Castro's Bodas de sangre (1956) and the first Argentine performance of Castro's Proserpina y el extranjero (1960), Alberto Ginastera's Don Rodrigo (1964), and Mario Perusso's La voz del silencio (1969) and Escorial (1989).

The Teatro Colón's repertory included works by Monteverdi and Cavalli, all the traditional Italian, French, and German operatic repertoire as well as contemporary works such as Berg's Wozzeck and Lulu, Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress, Janácek's Jenufa, Dallapiccola's Il prigioniero and Volo di notte, Pizzetti's La figlia di Jorio, Schoenberg's Erwartung and Moses and Aaron, Milhaud's Christophe Colomb, and Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmélites. One of the Teatro Colón's most notable events was the world premiere of Ernesto Halffter's completed version of Manuel de Falla's La Atlántida, sung in Catalán (1963). Also noteworthy were the South American premieres of Mozart's Idomeneo and Berlioz's Les Troyens and Benvenuto Cellini. A very special event was the production in 1982 of the earliest Spanish opera preserved, Celos aun del aire matan (1660), by Juan Hidalgo with a libretto by Pedro Calderón de la Barca. The Teatro Colón also presents symphonic concerts, recitals, and ballet.

See alsoMusic: Art Music .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Roberto Caamaño, La historia del Teatro Colón (1969).

Rodolfo Arizaga, Enciclopedia de la música argentina (1971); New Grove Dictionary of Opera, vol. 1 (1992).

Additional Bibliography

Faillace, Magdalena. Memoria y presente del Ballet del Teatro Colón, 1925–2005. Buenos Aires: Teatro Colón, Comision Honoraria de Homenaje por los 80 años de los Cuerpos Estables del Teatro Colón, 2005.

Peña López, Juan Manuel. El tango en el Teatro Colón. Buenos Aires: Marcelo Héctor Olivieri Editor, 2006.

Plate, Leonor. Operas Teatro Colón: Esperando el centenario. Buenos Aires: Editorial Dunken, 2006.

                                              Susana Salgado