In the shadow of Herculano: Miguel Ângelo Pereira and the challenges of composing opera in Portugal in the 1860’s and 70’s

Abstract

In February 1870 an opera based on the novel Eurico by Alexandre Herculano was premiered at the Teatro S. Carlos in Lisbon. The composer, Miguel Ângelo Pereira (1843-1901), was a young pianist and composer, born in the North of Portugal, who had spent part of his childhood and adolescence in Brazil. Even though it was not well received by the public and the critics, the opera was revived in 1874 in Oporto and in 1878 in Rio de Janeiro. From the start Eurico was portrayed as a different work from the current repertory, and was sometimes associated with the world of German instrumental music. Based on the few surviving sources and the contemporary press, this article attempts to show how Eurico fits in to the projects seeking to create a Portuguese national opera that were undertaken by a group of emigrants in Rio de Janeiro; how, in dramaturgical and musical terms, it is also close to the aesthetics of grand opéra; and how the psychological profile of the Miguel Ângelo – who thought of himself and is also described by his contemporaries, as a hero in search of an ideal –, allied to the emergence of a new musical canon, based on the works of the German composers, led to it being considered, after the death of its author in 1901, as the first attempt by a Portuguese composer to approach Wagnerian models.