Entertaining Lisbon: Music, Theater, and Modern Life in the Late 19th Century

2016 | Music & Dance

During the decades leading up to 1910, Portugal saw vast material improvements under the guise of modernization while in the midst of a significant political transformation - the establishment of the Portuguese First Republic. Urban planning, everyday life, and innovation merged in a rapidly changing Lisbon. Leisure activities for the citizens of the First Republic began to include new forms of musical theater, including operetta and the revue theater. These theatrical forms became an important site for the display of modernity, and the representation of a new national identity. Author Joao Silva argues that the rise of these genres is inextricably bound to the complex process through which the idea of Portugal was presented, naturalized, and commodified as a modern nation-state. Entertaining Lisbon studies popular entertainment in Portugal and its connections with modern life and nation-building, showing that the promotion of the nation through entertainment permeated the market for cult

Joao Silva (Author)