Often studied as a transitory step towards the late consolidation of Italian opera in Mexico, the activities of the Spanish tenor and composer Manuel García in Mexico City from 1827 to 1829 call for a more nuanced analysis. The spatial reconceptualisation pursued by transnational and global histories as well as the redefinition of cultural borders triggered by postcolonial studies give us the tools to address García’s Mexican career as a key moment in terms of understanding the effects and issues raised by the spread of Italian opera in Latin America at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The chapter rethinks García's activities in Mexico City as comprising one of the first (while at the same time highly problematic) cultural encounters between Europe and the young Latin American nation after its emancipation from Spain (1821). Until then, mutual perceptions between Europe and Mexico were distorted by the intrusive cultural politics of imperial Spain. After independence, such misperceptions became more marked. Perceived as a familiar expressions of Europeanness, Italian opera became the arena where issues of identity and otherness were discussed. A close reading of the operas García composed for Mexican audiences will reveal how Italian opera changed by absorbing and reflecting the multiple postcolonial tensions of Mexico City.

In the 1820s, a stable company of Italian singers was in charge of the operatic performances staged at the Imperial Theatre in Rio de Janeiro. Working together with a French ballet troupe, those soloists joined forces to present their repertoire before a heterogeneous audience. Works by Rossini and his contemporaries were sung in the original language, subscriptions were sold for annual seasons and Italian masterpieces crowned the theatrical festivities offered to the Emperor. The chapter examines this recently independent country’s attraction for foreign singers and looks at how these artists were able to pursue their careers in a totally different milieu to that to which they had been accustomed, living in a city that offered great opportunities, but also considerable challenges to newcomers. A small group of Italian singers were employed by a local impresario, with the aim of making opera a viable cultural activity at an Imperial Court that was proud of its connections with Europe, yet they also struggled with economic difficulties and the country’s political instability. The press assumed a central role in negotiating the relationship between artists and their audiences, revealing a growing public interest in opera, its backstage and the lives of its protagonists.

The importance of opera and operatic practices to nineteenth-century Latin American culture has been widely acknowledged; opera was central to the construction of ideas about liberalism, Europeanism, cosmopolitanism and the all-encompassing notion of 'civilisation'. The centrality of opera and of opera houses in the region, however, often obscures the ways in which opera, and Italian opera in particular, were being read. Taking account of the multiplicity and heterogeneity of operatic experiences in the region, the chapter examines the experience of Italian opera singers in the southern Andes (Chile, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador) during the 1840s, a period of major expansion of opera throughout Latin America. Often these singers were the first to perform opera in the region. How did they live the experience of being Italian and singing Italian opera in South America? Based on newspapers, archival documents and private letters, the chapter demonstrates how, for many of these singers, producing opera in Latin America was neither marked by a direct projection of their previous Italian experiences, nor was it seen as an exotic transatlantic adventure. Instead, it was something in between: a constant process of negotiation between their private and public identities.

The introduction examines the concept of italianità within its historical and cross-disciplinary context. Since the eighteenth century, music and especially opera have frequently been used as signifiers of national identity. Rousseau’s writings, and the responses they received, were particularly influential in associating music with national styles, reflecting linguistic conditions as well as the development of musical and operatic genres. These ideas resonated in debates on music, but also in travel writing and political thought, as exemplified in the works of de Staël, Stendhal and Goethe, but also Byron and Dickens. During the nineteenth century, often narrowly described as an age of nationalism, drawing connections between music and national character assumed a new dimension in political and aesthetic debates, partly due to the idea of reading opera as a contribution to processes of political emancipation. Especially in the non-European world, ideas about music were negotiated in relation to colonial and postcolonial experiences. But they also contributed to new notions of cosmopolitanism and a universal sense of belonging. The extent to which opera was intended to take a position within the political battles of national movements and global conflicts remains a matter of debate among opera scholars and historians.

The chapter discusses the role of Italian opera in Habsburg Vienna in relation to the cultural policies promoted by Austrian Emperor Ferdinand I (1835-48). It examines previously unknown negotiations between Donizetti and the Kärntnertortheater in the mid-1830s, emerging from recently discovered archival documents. These negotiations were part of an administrative reorganisation of the Kärntnertortheater aimed at reintroducing regular Italian opera seasons in Vienna, which had lapsed since the Italian impresario Domenico Barbaja left the city in 1828. The new impresario for Vienna’s Italian opera seasons, Bartolomeo Merelli, enjoyed an extensive business network in Italy. As the chapter shows, his appointment in Vienna was key to the reinforcement of Vienna’s cultural ties with Italy's major operatic centres. Together with Donizetti he maintained important connections with the Viennese aristocracy, which helped to sustain their professional and creative endeavours in the imperial capital. By focusing on this turning point in the nineteenth-century history of opera in Vienna, the chapter demonstrates how, at a time when national ideologies were spreading both north and south of the Alps, Italian opera became instrumental in asserting the supranational identity of the Austrian Empire.

In the first half of the nineteenth century, New Orleans’ reputation at home and abroad was for French opera. Performances of opéra comique appeared on the city’s stages in the last decade of the eighteenth century; from the 1830s, grand opéra became a mainstay of the repertoire at the francophone Théâtre d’Orléans, whose resident company was recruited annually from Europe. ‘Rossini fever’ seems largely to have bypassed New Orleans, and the relatively few performances of Italian operas that the city did have in the first three decades of the century were always in French (or sometimes English) translation and often heavily adapted. Between 1837 and 1842, however, English-born impresario James Caldwell arranged several short seasons of Italian opera in an attempt to lure novelty-loving audiences to his St Charles Theatre. Although there were already numerous troupes performing opera in Italian further north in the United States, the troupes Caldwell engaged came to New Orleans from the south, from Cuba, where they were contracted to Havana’s theatres. This chapter focuses on the seasons given by these troupes, exploring the discussions that took place about the relative merits of French and Italian comedy, and the exchange of performers and materials between the permanent French troupe and the visiting Italians. When the Théâtre d’Orléans troupe was invited to visit Havana the press expressed concerns that Cuba was ‘uncivilised’ and unhygienic, and that news of a tour there would ultimately prevent New Orleans from recruiting high-quality performers for its own francophone troupe.