In 1880, Carlos Gomes crosses the Atlantic as a celebrated master.
Handwritten letter from Carlos Gomes to an as yet unidentified recipient.
20.4 cm x 25.4 cm.
One sheet, four pages.
In Italian
Rio de Janeiro, October 5, 1880.
Excellent state of conservation.
Unique item.
I will not describe the festivities that the Brazilian cities held for me everywhere; that task would fall to an educated journalist; I can only tell you that in Rio the festivities were colossal and perhaps exaggerated, for a modest musician like your Gomes. The worst part was that the festivities lasted too long, and ended up boring and tiring me out!
In 1880, Carlos Gomes experienced one of the peaks of his career: after the premiere of "Il Guarany" in Lisbon, he crossed the Atlantic at the invitation of the Bahian government, where he attended performances of "Salvator Rosa" and "Il Guarany." He then proceeded to Rio de Janeiro, where he was received with public honors, before continuing to São Paulo. It was the triumphant return of the "Brazilian maestro" to his homeland, celebrated by the press and society of the time as a national event, a period during which he also composed the Hymn of Camões' Centenary.
This letter, written in Rio on October 5, 1880, on Carlos Gomes' personal letterhead, directly echoes this episode: it offers an intimate and rarely documented counterpoint. Far from the official and hagiographic account, Gomes confesses his own weariness with the magnitude of the celebrations, while also evoking the performances of "Salvator Rosa," a commercial debt of two thousand gold pounds related to the dissemination of his scores in Brazil, and above all the delivery of an imperial decoration—the Order of the Rose—which he carried for a Milanese friend, probably connected to the Ricordi house. The document thus captures, in an instant, the coexistence in Gomes of public glory and a much more earthly relational and commercial life.
The length of the text, the richness of its biographical content, and the precise temporal delimitation it documents—at the heart of the 1880 Brazilian tour—make this letter an item of exceptional interest for any collection dedicated to the composer or Brazilian music.
