History of Opera and Periodicals. Advances in the Knowledge of Hemerographic Sources for the Study of Lyric Music in Buenos Aires (1870-1910)

Abstract

During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, lyrical performances occupied a central place within the cultural consumption in Buenos Aires. It is to be expected that a vigorous specialized press would have accompanied such a development of the genres of musical theatre. However, such a conjecture runs up against an elusive reality: we know only a handful of titles, primarily preserved in incomplete collections. This paper evaluates the progress made in the knowledge of periodical sources available for the study of lyrical activity between 1870 and the first decade of the 20th century. These sources are of interest as valuable historical documents and objects of study in their own right, since the specialized press played an essential role in the local and transnational theatre industry. First, we present an update of music history studies on and from periodical sources in Argentina, from the appearance of the Guía de revistas de música de la Argentina (Donozo 2009) up to the present. Then, we show the results of researching work carried out in different archives ―Biblioteca Nacional, Teatro Colón, Instituto de Investigación Musicológica “Carlos Vega” and online repositories― through an overview of periodicals relevant to the study of musical theatre in Buenos Aires between 1870 and 1910.