Abstract
While the wealth produced by slave labour financed the importing of European opera to Brazil, the ban on the slave trade was instrumental to the definitive installation of an operatic system in the tropical empire. As Luiz Felipe de Alencastro highlights, one of the effects of the Eusébio de Queiróz Law was an increase in the importation of superfluous and luxury goods, replacing enslaved Africans as ballast in Brazil’s trade balance. Literature and journalism left rich testimonies of the adventures, misadventures and contradictions of this period. By analysing the play O demônio familiar (1857) by José de Alencar, and the controversy it generated in the press between Francisco Otaviano and Paula Brito, this paper seeks to explore the flows between the universes of lyrical theatre and slavery in Rio de Janeiro in and around 1850.
Keywords
Lyrical theater; dramatic theater; history of the press; slavery; abolitionism