A vingança da cigana

A vingança da cigana is one of two farces in Portuguese composed by António Leal Moreira in collaboration with Domingos Caldas Barbosa, a librettist born in Brazil. These two works constitute the only examples of operatic productions in Portuguese presented at the Teatro de São Carlos during the period when Leal Moreira served as director of that institution². The farce assumes particular relevance as a testimony to the sonic tradition of entremezes and farces shared between Portugal and Brazil, simultaneously asserting itself as a gesture of autonomy in the face of the dominant Italian influence. This autonomy manifests itself in the incorporation of popular elements associated with Afro-diasporic culture on stage, namely lundus, batuques, modinhas and fados³.

The work was “performed in 1964 and 1972 at the Teatro da Trindade in Lisbon, in 1977 and 1980 at the Teatro de São Carlos in Lisbon, in 1981 at the Círculo Portuense de Ópera in Porto, in 1983 at the Teatro Nacional de Brasília – Brazil, in 1988 again at the Teatro de São Carlos in Lisbon, and also in 2004 at the Sintra Estúdio de Ópera in Sintra”⁴.