Invisible histories of Teatro da Paz: from the building to the first renovation.Belém, Province of Pará (1869-1890)

Invisible histories of Teatro da Paz: from the building to the first renovation. Belém, Province of Pará (1869-1890)

Roseane Silveira de Souza

Master Dissertation, Post-Graduate Studies Program in History / Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, São Paulo (SP), Brazil 2009, e-mail: [e-mail]

The dissertation aims to get a renewed sense over the early times of Teatro da Paz ('Peace Theater'), an opera house in the urban design of Belém, the capital of former Province of Pará (now Pará State), by revealing and rereading written sources and also images. Following the historian Antonio Mitre, it means to rewrite this history by reinterpretating essential concepts through the sources. Invisible histories refer to three different facts registered from 1869 to 1890: the construction of the theater (1869-1878), the opening and the public uses for nine years (1878-1887) and the first renovation (1887-1890). According the author's hypothesis, some aspects of these facts were hidden under the official history of the theater as a result of another renovation occurred fourteen years later, between 1904 and 1905, when the building was completely changed in its appearance, consolidating this new image so far. Early republicans in Pará, motivated by the Positivist Thought, have intended to blur the past and the images in the city associated to collapsed Monarchy as a synonym of cultural decline. It was a kind of forgetfulness policy in order to establish a new way of life in the capital, based on European social values, and what they have considered progress and a modern life. This research comprehends studies of Social History, embracing the field of Cultural History, specially the concept of representation, and so the territories of urban history and material culture. Concepts as monument, cultural heritage, public buildings, public and image are also involved in. The sources are official documents from Administration Office of Teatro da Paz (1882 to 1899); official speeches and reports produced by presidents of the former Province of Pará and also by governors of Pará State; 19th-and-20th-century newspapers of Pará; official printed documents; the Plan of Belém in 1771; and Chrispim do Amaral and Domenico de Angelis' artistic pictures inside auditorium. Finally, the research points to other studies about Province of Pará and also about one of its principal monuments built during the rubber era.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  31 Aug 2010
• Date of issue
  Dec 2009