Pleasures and pains: the representation of national identity in the peruvian lyrical theater of the 19th century

Abstract

Varied songs and dances “of the land” have been mentioned in Lima’s colonial theater since the 18th century as a representation of the indigenous people in tonadillas and loas, but in the following century their use as sound representatives of different conceptions of the national identity was generalized. How did this transfer of content happen and in what contexts did this phenomenon occur? The arrival of the Spanish zarzuela with its extensive musical vocabulary rooted in rural and urban music stimulated the development of Peruvian lyrical theater which, in an exercise of equivalence, resorted to the use of local musical genres in stage production. In some works, these songs and dances were used to embody the Peruvian identity in a unitary discourse; in others, they appeared as a sound symbol of an exotic past and finally they were used as representation of diverse ethnic and social groups in the framework of the capital city. This article proposes a study of genres such as yaraví,
zamacueca and huayno that appear in lyrical works from the second half of the 19th century premiered in Lima, such as La zarzuela en la capital del Perú (1857), Placeres y Dolores (1867), ¡Pobre Indio! (1868), Atahualpa (1877) and Lima (1891).