There’s much more to do in the Amazon than see the jungle. So we left our motorcycles on the coast and flew inland to Manaus for a look.
In the centre of this city is an opera theatre, built by an eccentric, but rich, rubber barron in the late 19th century. It has all the opulence you would expect from a theatre of its time including marble pillars, fine carpentry, lavish artworks and grand chandeliers. But the 700 seat Teatro Amazonas is in the middle of the hot and steamy jungle, a good four days boat ride from the coast!
We took a guided tour and learned how it was built, how the paved road around the theatre was once lined with rubber to reduce the noise from late-arriving horse carriages, and how some upper class women would send their evening gowns to Paris for cleaning.
We also discovered we could get tickets to that night’s opera for just five reals each – that’s about $2.50 in Australian or US dollars. It was our last night in Manaus and the final performance of Aventuras da Raposa Astuta by Leos Janacek. It was an opportunity too good to miss.
Our seats were located in a box high up with fairly poor views (hence the cheap rates). When we arrived a very well dressed young couple were already seated in the box. Although we too were wearing our finest clothes, freshly laundered following a four day jungle tour, we were no match for their elegance. Some whispering ensued between the gentleman and the theatre manager and the couple were swiftly ushered away. Perhaps the seats weren’t to their satisfaction, however there’s a slight chance that the odour emanating from our shoes may have offended. All we had to wear were our hiking boots which had been continuously wet and worn for four days of trekking in the jungle (we tried drying them all day in the sun but it only made them worse). Alternatively we could have worn our Havaianas, but this was the opera afterall! Anyway, we now had the whole box to ourselves.
To report on the opera itself, if you closed your eyes you heard a beautiful rich orchestra with the clear strong voices of first class vocalists. However, when you opened your eyes, it looked more like a pantomime with an artificial grass stage floor, cardboard cut-out like sets, child chorus and animal costumes. To be fair, this style was probably an artistic choice and may have been the reason why the audience consisted of a lot of children. As we looked around the auditorium we could see the boxes were full with families clearly enjoying the show. The crying babies and talking children were a stark contrast to Australian opera audiences. The noise didn’t seem to bother the performers, at least they knew the audience was awake!
The composer was Czech and I still don’t know in what language the opera was sung, but the subtitles were in Portuguese. To try and keep up with the storyline, we often referred to the sign language interpreter whose performance was outstanding and mesmerizing with his expressive and animated translation (see the short YouTube video below).
By the end of the three act opera, we had witnessed a unique and unexpected aspect of life in the jungle.
See a snippet of the sign language interpreter.
Our Odyssey Overland 
I’m catching up on some of your posts (I’m woefully behind and loving reading them over a coffee this gloomy Sydney morning) and I nearly snorted my coffee out nose watching the video of the opera signer (as opposed to opera singer!)! I’m now pondering the value of signing versus subtitles for the hearing impaired at an opera. I’m glad he was a charismatic signer – as I reckon it would have been hard to watch him AND the opera singers!
You could only really watch one or the other given the position of the interpreter’s screen. Unlike some in the audience, I’m grateful that I could watch the sign language interpreter, AND listen to the music and singing.