Sancho Panza comes to Brazil

Abstract

The Brazilian-born Jewish dramatist António José da Silva (1705-39) marked the history of Luso-Brazilian theatre with the first ‘Portuguese Opera’, a puppet opera premiered at Lisbon’s Teatro do Bairro Alto (1733) and entitled A vida de D. Quixote de la Mancha e do gordo Sancho Pança. Published after his death, at the hands of the Inquisition, in Theatro comico Portuguez, ou colecção das operas Portuguezas (Lisboa, 1744), it established new paradigms: the use of prose dialogue and verse lyrical numbers, Italianate arias, but also choruses and sung minuets. Still during the 18th century, two scenes were extracted from it to form the entremez O grande Governador da Ilha dos Lagartos, in which Sancho Pança assumes the governorship of an island. This paper focuses on the process of ‘resurrection’ of this entremez through a carefully-documented project at the Universidade Federal de Goiás, Brazil, which involved a whole range of literary, musical and theatrical tasks, including the identifying, adaptation and performance of suitable music, raising important issues with regard to reconstruction, authenticity and performance practice. Following the 2014 production in Pirenópolis, it received successful performances in Ouro Preto and Belo Horizonte in 2019.