Music, theatre and the nation :the entertainment market in Lisbon (1865-1908)

Abstract

The development of the Portuguese entertainment market and the rise of several types of musical theatre are inextricably bound to the complex symbolic and material process through which Portugal was established, presented, developed, and commodified as a modern nation-state between 1865 and 1908. During this period, several fundamental transformations that merged urban planning, everyday life, and modernity took place in Lisbon. In this process, leisure activities began to include new forms of music theatre (such as operetta and the revue theatre) that became an important site for the display of modernity, representing and commodifying the nation. Despite its colonial possessions, Portugal was a peripheral European country where modernity developed in a specific way. The commodification of music associated with both music publishing and mechanical music fostered the creation of a transnational market for goods in a period when most of the trade was conducted with or within national economies. In this context, the Portuguese entertainment market reflected a particular form of negotiation between the local, the national and the global levels, in which gender, class, ethnicity, and technology intertwined with theatrical repertoires, street sounds and domestic music making.