Épica e engajamento na ópera Café, de Mário de Andrade

• Ano de defesa: 2019
• Autor(a) principal: Freitas, Philippe Curimbaba [UNIFESP]
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Instituição de defesa: Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP)
• Palavras-chave em Português: Opera; Epic Theater; Commitment; Demagogy; Brazilian Modernism.; Ópera; Teatro Épico; Engajamento; Demagogia; Modernismo Brasileiro.
• Link de acesso: https://sucupira.capes.gov.br/sucupira/public/consultas/coleta/trabalhoConclusao/viewTrabalhoConclusao.jsf?popup=true&id_trabalho=8110997; https://repositorio.unifesp.br/handle/11600/59493

The following text is an interpretation of the opera Café [coffee], which was conceived by the Brazilian modernist writer Mário de Andrade in partnership with the composer Francisco Mignone. Considering the fact that Mignone didn’t compose the musical part of the opera, my research was based on the writer’s texts and manuscripts (libretto, “Melodramatic conception”, directions and so on). In three acts and five tableaux, Café depicts the workers’ suffering in different locations (a coffee exportation harbor warehouse, a coffee plantation, a parliamentary session, a train station whose railways connect the farms’ surroundings to the big city, and a slum), in the aftermath of the devaluation of the international price of coffee, as a result of the 1929 crisis. The opera sets itself apart from realist and localist styles, and ends with a socialist revolution in an apotheotic mood. My approach on Café is based mainly on two concepts: epic and commitment. The first one, which was not coined by the author himself, is mostly based on Peter Szondi and Anatol Rosenfeld’s works, though it follows a specific outspread throughout the analysis. The second one is among the most relevant concepts in Mário de Andrade’s aesthetic thinking, therefore it is framed according to the writer’s own texts, be it artistic or not. This thesis starts considering the author’s directions concerning scenographic features, making a distinction between dramatic and non-dramatic resources as well as, among the latter, between lyricism and prophetic symbolism. Afterwards, it unfolds an analysis of the opera’s epic structure, 1) which balances the opinion that claims its discontinuous, hesitating or contradictory nature – as composed by two texts of a different nature – and pursues some continuity and an epic focus, both based on the text but in connection to the “Melodramatic conception”; and 2) whose core is the sacrificial principle, or rather, the death and resurrection cycle. However, as the epic narrative assimilates the non-narratable – that is to say, the miracle – an analysis restricted to it reveals itself to be insufficient. Thus, the text ends dealing with the concept of commitment, which takes the form of an equation – that can be solved in different ways – among three factors: the subject, the form and the audience. The matter of commitment emerges insofar as some artistic resources are not managed aiming at a narrative role, but mostly seeking specific effects on the audience, whether demanding their reflection or stimulating certain moral behaviors from them. In the last case, the subject – the main social objective mediation link between the artist and the popular audience – decreases in relevance.