Opera the South American Way: The Case of Brazil and Gehad Hajar’s Pioneering Festival (Naxos Musicology)
by Mahima Macchione (Published on August 28, 2020) Brazil has its own way of doing opera. The number of festivals keeps increasing, and opera performances - whether full productions or recitals - are being offered by theatres and opera houses across the country. That’s not to say, though, that state and national politics don’t get in the way: as is often the case in Latin America, everything gets affected by a volatile political system, including the arts. And, yet, many of the top names in opera today come from this part of the world, so surely they must be getting something right? At the moment, Brazil seems to be doing especially well in building audiences, with a new festival created by the enterprising opera ‘impresario’ (and of course opera lover) Gehad Hajar, who is changing the cultural landscape of the southern state of Paraná with his unorthodox approach. He is indeed proof that it only takes one man with a vision to change the opera world, one opera buff at a time. Rio de Ja