For the student of the performing arts in South America, this volume is essential; for the music lover, problematic.

The oldest functioning great opera house in the Americas, Teatro Solìs was inaugurated in 1856. Some 200 kilometers across the Rio de la Plata from Buenos Aires, Montevideo needed only a suitable hall to become a major stop for touring opera companies. The Solìs served that function for decades, hosting most of the greatest names of Italian opera and many of the French and Russian school as well. (German opera was performed, but generally in Italian.) Competing impresarios brought Caruso, Battistini, Patti, and Galli-Curci to perform under Toscanini and Serafin. This volume traces that history in approximate chronologic order with ample illustrations and authoritative text. And yet it is flawed in ways which will frustrate the casual reader.

Overwhelmingly, the book is a catalogue of events. Most of its pages are devoted to appendixes, but there is no index to the 202 pages of straight text. That text includes the rivals of the Solìs, notably the Teatro Urquiza which was at times the equal of the Solìs; yet the appendixes' failure to cover those houses leaves the reader at a loss for correlation. Even for the Solìs, the failure of strict chronology in the chapters makes locating internal references problematic. The Solìs chronology itself is not completely consistent with the text: on p. 88, Andrés de Segurola 'sang only once that season', yet on p. 283, eight performances show that fine basso during that (1899) season at the Solìs.

It is not possible to separate the cultural life from the politics of South America, but their relationship is only suggested until the final chapters when the great theater was idled by national turmoil. While such a volume as this is not the place for a history of Uruguay, context showing the theater's role as a cultural center for the municipality and for the nation would be welcome. It may be ungenerous to note awkward wording, but it is necessary if one is to be fair to the reader. It would appear that not only the author but also her editors are more comfortable in Spanish than in English. For example, an artist's vocal skills are often distinguished from his 'scenic' - presumably, 'dramatic' abilities; or 'a great applause' where one would expect to see 'a great ovation'. There are many other confusing expressions, such as (p. 93) 'Between 1900 until the late 1910s'. In a few instances, either the language or the substance is at fault. In the discussion of Bayreuth's rights to Parsifal on p. 136, the implication that the Solìs performance was legal is apparently contradicted by the dates provided.

Reading this volume makes one realize the breadth and richness of musical life in South America in the century and a half in which the Teatro Solìs has displayed it. For that appreciation alone, Professor Salgado's loving research is most welcome.

Michael Richter, 2 August 2003
mrichter@cpl.net

Salgado, Susana. The Teatro Solìs: 150 Years of Opera, Concert, and Ballet in Montevideo. 516 pp, 8 color plates, Wesleyan University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-8195-6594-6 (paper) $29.95 US, ISBN 0-8195-6593-8 (cloth) $70.00 US

Michael Richter was born in Philadelphia in 1939. After graduating from the University of Chicago in 1960, he worked in various technology fields, largely aerospace systems engineering, until being disabled by heart disease in 1989. His love of music emerged early, attending symphony concerts in Cincinnati, Chicago, Philadelphia and Boston. An obsession with music for the voice began with the discovery of Mozart's operas in the early 1960s and has never abated. For the past decade, he has combined professional and musical interests in efforts to preserve our common musical heritage, transferring recordings and publishing volumes of an Audio Encyclopedia, as described at his WWW site www.mrichter.com . He has published numerous articles in engineering journals together with a book on computer programming, but his writings, in both the Opera Quarterly and The Classical Singer, now focus on music and recording technology