Has anybody seen the Opera House in Manaus?

I know it is not the one in this movie, but it is equally bizarre, sitting as it does in Amazonia. The fanciful and fantastic opera house stands in all it’s glory, painted pale pink and crowned with a cupola consisting of thirty-six thousand mosaic tiles in the national colours of the Brazilian flag, brought from Alsace in France. It took twelve years to build, and was completed in 1896.

Designed in a pastiche of Italian Renaissance styles by a Lisbon architect, it cost some 3 million dollars to complete and was funded by private subscription. The wrought-iron skeleton of the building comes from Scotland, the stone from Italy. The doors and stairways were from England and Italy. Only the wood used on the floor and for the chairs was Brazilian and that was made up in Europe.

On each column of the auditorium are Greek tragedy masks representing famous writers, artists, painters and musicians like Shakespeare, Moliere, Goethe, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner – there are 22 masks in all. The driveway outside is made from a blend of rubber, clay and sand, to dampen the noise of horse-carriages as they arrived.

Although I was able to establish that people as various as Jose Carreras, Jenny Lind and the Ballet Russe have performed there, I was not able to verify whether Caruso actually did sing or not. Part of the charm of the Teatro Amazonas is that enigmatic, slightly surreal air - Sarah Bernhardt, Luciano Pavarotti, Margot Fonteyn were all mentioned, but slightly uncertainly. Eventually I had to concede defeat and give up on sorting out the myth from the reality.