At the beginning of the film Fitzcarraldo (1982), by the German director Werner Herzog, the Teatro Amazonas in Manaus makes a stellar appearance; Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald’s character—known as Fitzcarraldo—an eccentric Irish adventurer and merchant obsessed with opera, approaches the theater, eager to hear tenor Enrico Caruso, the star in Verdi’s opera Ernani, sing. 

“We come from Iquitos, 1,200 miles downriver, I had to row because my boat’s engine broke down […] For two days and two nights I have rowed to see Caruso at least once in my life,” says Fitzcarraldo, played in the tape by Klaus Kinski. In front of it stands the facade of the Teatro Amazonas, characterized by a rounded pediment, with reliefs that adorn the surface and rows of three-story columns that support the entire structure.

Fitzcarraldo’s encounter with the Teatro Amazonas illustrates the determination with which audiences flocked —and still do— to this opera house. The scene also shows how this building became one of the main historical remnants —and current tourist and cultural attraction— of Manaus, a city located in the middle of the Amazon, which flourished thanks to the rubber industry during the 19th century and became the “Paris of the jungle”, an emblem of the Brazilian belle époque.