The Teatro Municipal and my arrival in São Paulo
I have fond memories of the Teatro Municipal of São Paulo. When I arrived in that city, around my early twenties for studying purposes, I spent almost a whole year trying to adapt myself to the fact that I was alone there and that São Paulo would require a completely different way of enjoying the city, much different of the one people had in Rio de Janeiro.
As time passed on, I discover myself much closer to São Paulo way of life in comparison of that of Rio.
The Teatro Municipal has something to do with it.
Through the Municipal Theatre I started to know the city better. First I just went to attend the free performances of some local orchestras. Then I walked freely, with no purpose in downtown São Paulo.
With time I was walking more deeply in the neighborhoods, having the chance of knowing museums, librarys, restaurants, parks, streets and avenues. Most important of all, however, was the chance to observe the relation between the paulistanos and their city.
São Paulo is not nearly as beautiful as Rio de Janeiro, I have to say, but, for me, is immensely more interesting. In São Paulo we do not have, as in Rio, the concentration of some many cultural apparatus in so few city districts. No, in Sampa there are theaters, showrooms and cultural sites dispersed throughout the city.
A 2008 survey showed that the city had by that time 120 theaters, 40 cultural centers, 257 cinemas, 90 museums and some 75 public libraries*. These numbers for sure are now exceeded.
Okay, they are not equally distributed among all districts, but when one compares them with Rio cultural apparatus (wich is 80%, at least, in very few rich neighbors), Sampa provides to its population much more democratic acess to cultural goods. No doubt about it!
Well, I was speaking about the Municipal.
There, Opera first attracted my interest. Not that I had not seen one before in Rio. In fact I had , but the production and plot was so terribly made by that time by a poor talent and arrogant contemporary author called Gerald Thomas that it took me some years to have my attention aroused again towards operas (some years later I have the opportunity of seeing great classic operas in the Municipal of Rio de Janeiro.)
So, for appropriate purposes my first opera was Verdi's Macbeth at Municipal of São Paulo!
As I got to know better the city center I was venturing into other theaters, other tastes. I keep saying, however, that the Municipal was my gateway to cultural life in a city which I had no family, friend or known person.
photo: Paulo Vitale
Source: http://especiais.ig.com.br/zoom/o-centenario-do-teatro-municipal-de-sao-paulo/
Source: http://www.timeout.com.br/sao-paulo/teatro-danca/features/112/theatro-municipal
*URBS Magazine, p. 51, nº 45. 2008
