António Luiz Miró

António Luís Miró was a composer and pianist of Spanish origin, born in Granada on July 25, 1815, who developed most of his career in Portugal. Still in his childhood, he moved to Lisbon with his father, Joaquim Miró, also a musician. In the Portuguese capital, he studied with Domingos Bomtempo and with Friar José Marques, initially establishing himself as a pianist of great merit. However, it was mainly as a composer and musical director of theatre that he achieved notoriety¹.

In 1826, Miró enrolled in the Brotherhood of Santa Cecília and began his artistic career, initially associating himself with the Teatro do Salitre. There, he gave his first piano recital and composed music for the plays presented on that stage. When the Count of Farrobo reopened his Teatro das Laranjeiras in 1834, the composer was hired as mestre-ensaiador (rehearsal master) and, in that same year, had his first experience leading an operatic production – Testa di bronzo by Saverio Mercadante. It was also in this context that he ventured into composing dramatic music, with Il Sonnambulo, presented at the Laranjeiras on February 10, 1835, and shortly afterwards at the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos².

By that time, Miró was already the second maestro at São Carlos – he remained there until 1843, returning for the period between 1845 and 1846. He presented his second opera, Atar ossia il serraglio di Ormuz, on October 21, 1836, but failed to please the public³. In addition, he composed other dramatic works presented on the main Lisbon stages, such as São Carlos, the Teatro da Rua dos Condes, and the Teatro D. Maria, frequently using Italian librettos, notably those by Felice Romani⁴. In 1844, he began writing a new opera entitled O cativo de Fez. Although no sketches of the work are known, Luísa Cymbron suggests that

It must have been a new opera about the disaster of Alcácer Quibir, influenced by Don Sébastien, which Donizetti dedicated to Queen Maria II and whose premiere in 1843 had some impact in Lisbon musical circles, or by the homonymous drama by Silva Abranches, awarded in 1839, one of the sources that inspired Garrett for Frei Luís de Sousa⁵.

At the end of the 1840s, already away from São Carlos, Miró sought to associate himself with the project of the Teatro do Ginásio, where comic operas in Portuguese were being performed. His first approach to the new genre gave rise to the opera A Marqueza, presented with great success on October 4, 1848. This experience was followed by O Conselho das Dez, still in 1848, and A Velhice namorada sempre leva surriada, in February 1849⁶. This last work was the subject of special praise, as it was a composition by national authors on national subjects⁷.

The transition to the following decade marked a new beginning in Miró’s career – he ended his collaboration with the Teatro do Ginásio and left for Maranhão in Brazil, where he became a piano teacher and director of the Teatro São Luiz, responsible for the 1852 season⁸. However, this new phase of his career was not to last long. In May 1853, the composer died in Pernambuco, before he could return to Portugal⁹.