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Late nineteenth-century Mexico had a diverse opera scene that attracted companies from all over Europe and the Americas. Singers from Italy, France, and Spain, as well as Cuba and the United States, came to Mexico City to perform for enthusiastic audiences. Italian operas, French opéra, Spanish zarzuelas, and other genres enjoyed success in the many Mexico City theaters and temporary stages. In addition to foreign singers, dancers, and impresarios, Mexican musicians also established careers in opera both in Mexico City and abroad. Little present-day scholarship addresses the significance of Mexico in the nineteenth-century opera circuit, but late-nineteenth-century European journals recognized the importance of opera in Mexico by publishing reviews of singers and performances, particularly those in Mexico City.
The "foreign news" sections of music journals from France, England, Italy, and Germany included accounts of the notable opera performances, and particularly of Mexican premieres of both European and Mexican operas in Mexico City. They appeared alongside reports from cities such as Milan, Bologna, Berlin, and Vienna. Critics and correspondents in La revue et Gazette musicale de Paris, as well as The Musical World and The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular in London responded to Mexico City's growing significance in the world operatic sphere, and revealed efforts to reinforce European dominance in opera, while also acknowledging the existence of satellite operatic centers outside of Europe. Over time they also illustrated changing perceptions of Mexican opera as a legitimately separate entity from European opera.
Opera in Mexico began with the 1711 performance of Manuel Zumaya's La Parténope in Mexico City.1 Public performances of opera did not occur until the early nineteenth century, and the majority of these works by Cimarosa, Rossini, and Paisiello were performed in Spanish. Manuel García brought his opera company to Mexico in the late 1820s, and in the 1830s the Mexican government patronized the Italian opera company of Filippo Galli, which increased the demand for operas by Bellini, Donizetti, and Rossini performed in Italian.2
Mexican composers such as Luis Baca (1826-55) and Cenobio Paniagua (1821-82) attempted to enter the thriving opera stage in the 1850s. While neither of Baca's operas received a premiere, Cenobio Paniagua's opera Catalina de Guisa premiered in Mexico in 1859.3 The premiere occurred fourteen years after its composition...