A disputed scene: musical theater, society and culture in São Paulo City in the 1920s and 1930s

Abstract

Until little known and little studied, the musical theater consumed in São Paulo during the early decades of the twentieth century is a privileged object for the investigation of urban culture of this period and its contradictions. Because of its close connections to the cultural and social changes experienced in the state's capital of São Paulo, this kind of spectacle has become a stage for numerous disputes, involving both the "real society" - formed by spectators, playwrights, composers, actors, critics, producers, government agents etc. - as the "imaginary society" represented on the scene. These disputes have occurred in different spheres, including the three main ones that will be analyzed in this research. In the sphere of social representations, the research will study the identity constructions that helped to establish, through the character-types that sung on the stage, a distinctive musical genre (labeled "caipira" or "sertanejo") that was prefigured in the theater and accomplished on the radio, highlighting the disputes over the meaning of "being paulista". In the aesthetic sphere, the research will analyze the conflicts over the definition of theatrical music genres, which refer not only to the writing models used by playwrights and composers, but also to the spectators'/auditors' horizons of expectations. Finally, in the cultural politics sphere, the research will demonstrate that the musical theater was at the heart of a dispute in which the modernist program of building a national music, defended by Mário de Andrade, was opposed both to the conservative and "Italianized" project of teachers from Dramatic and Musical Conservatory of São Paulo, represented by Armando Belardi, as the rising mass culture and its unclassifiable products.