Exchanging Glances at the Opera. Reflections on Groups and Identity in Bogota during the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

The definition of an identity on the part of the cultural elite of Bogotá during the nineteenth century generated a discourse on the subject of the “civilised”. This text sets out to explore what the mechanisms for observing and controlling civilised behaviour were during opera performances. The groups that were observed were groups that, by means of different strategies, demonstrated an individual and collective identity. The glances they exchanged enables mechanisms of control to be defined and a Republican identity, associated with the ideal of the civilisation of the new Republic to be verified. The spectator-reviewer’s gaze was different in accordance with whether it was directed towards the proscenium, the female public or other men. This view was recorded in the reviews, true chronicles of an elite, whose interpretation oscillated between the truth and the imagined. Opera was therefore seen as a vast social theatre, oblivious to aesthetic or artistic considerations.