The Italian soprano who captivated the stages of the Second Empire.

The book retraces the life and work of Augusta Candiani, a diva of the Brazilian opera scene in the 19th century.

Singer Augusta Candiani was a prominent figure in the court of Emperor Pedro II. On stage, her figure dominated the scene; offstage, her name was omnipresent in newspapers, soirées, letters, tributes, and passionate disputes. During the Second Reign (1840-1889), the Italian became a central figure in a decisive moment in Brazilian cultural life. This trajectory, marked by fervent applause, public clashes, and intimate dramas, is now recovered in the book Augusta Candiani – The Prima Donna of the Era of Pedro II , by Rio de Janeiro researcher Andrea Carvalho Stark, published by Editora da Unicamp.

The book, with 659 pages, the result of meticulous research, recounts the life of one of the leading artists of the Brazilian stage in the 19th century and, at the same time, offers a broad portrait of the formation of the opera scene in Brazil. The work includes reproductions of images, newspaper articles, and a detailed survey of the singer's repertoire.

The work stems from decades of research and a personal journey marked by an interest in recovering forgotten stories of women who have been marginalized from official narratives. "Candiani was immense in her time, but then she was erased. That really caught my attention."

The singer entered the author's life while she was still an undergraduate at the Faculty of Letters of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), when her focus was on the history of Rio de Janeiro samba. "When I was studying the music that existed in 19th-century Brazil, I found in a book by [José Ramos] Tinhorão, a great historian of popular music, a text that said that Candiani sang modinhas, explaining that she came from Italy to be the diva of Bellini's opera Norma , and that she died in the 'distant Rio de Janeiro suburb of Santa Cruz' in 1890."

“I lived in the suburbs at the time, and I thought Santa Cruz, in the West Zone of Rio, was quite far away. I kept wondering: how did this woman leave Italy, which was the center of opera, and end up dying in Santa Cruz? I was intrigued,” she recalls. Through a college colleague, she met a historian from the region and managed to contact a great-great-granddaughter of the singer, who invited her to visit her. “She showed me Candiani’s painting, a reproduction of which is in the book. It was the first time I saw her face. It was a full-length portrait, with the edges destroyed, part of it also damaged, but which is now restored.” From that encounter, her interest intensified.

Increasingly involved, she began researching at the National Library, the National Archives, and other collections. “But then I got involved in other projects and that took a backseat. When I decided to do my master's degree, I thought: I'm going back to this story.” Then, for her doctorate, she decided to write a thesis on the spectator in 19th-century Rio de Janeiro, a topic that also has parallels with her research on Candiani.

Over the years, technology has become a great ally. “Before, I researched on microfilm and wrote everything down in notebooks, spending hours trying to find a reference. It was physical work: I had to go to the place, look at page by page, and handle documents that were sensitive due to the wear and tear of time. There were no shortcuts. Then, with the digital age, it became much easier to work with periodicals, as well as with document collections from Brazil and, especially, Europe,” he recounts.

Without specific funding for the research and writing of the book, the work progressed gradually. The project, initially conceived as a film, ended up taking another form. “I intended to write a screenplay because the story is extremely visual and dramatic, but the richness of the material led me to seek a format that would better preserve this memory,” he emphasizes. The opportunity to finish the work came during the pandemic. “Despite that terrible moment, I was able to stay home and finish the book.”

The research, however, required an important turning point. "There comes a time when you need to stop and let the book be born, even without having found all the answers." For the author, some gaps, far from weakening the work, reinforce the historical character of the investigation. "I worked with the material I managed to gather, creating perceptions, constructing a possible reading of that time," she states.

a star is born

Born in Milan, Augusta Candiani was born on April 3, 1820. She arrived in Rio de Janeiro in December 1843, in the first wave of European artists who came to try their luck on Brazilian stages, accompanied by her husband, the pharmacist Gioacchino Candiani. She was 23 years old and pregnant.

In Milan, Candiani was a budding artist. But, upon her debut in Brazil on January 17, 1844, at the São Pedro de Alcântara Theater, a star was born. In the first performance in Brazilian territory of the opera Norma , by Vincenzo Bellini, with a libretto by Felice Romani, the singer, seven months pregnant, was the protagonist. Her daughter would be born in March of that year and would be named Theresa Cristina Maria, in homage to the empress, who was the child's godmother.

Newspapers of the time recorded enthusiastic applause, praise for the purity and power of her soprano voice, as well as comments on her stage presence. More than singing, Candiani embodied the character. When Norma pleaded, the audience seemed to plead along with her. It was precisely this combination of voice and presence that transformed her into a phenomenon.

Alongside fellow Italian singer Clara Delmastro, Candiani was at the center of an intense dispute between factions of admirers. These were the so-called theatrical factions, groups that divided the audience between applause for their favorite and insults for their rival. The famous "stomping"—foot stomping, cane blows, whistles, and shouts—transformed the theater into an arena. "It was a very intense, almost militant, relationship between Candiani's followers and Delmastro's followers," says Stark.

The author dedicates the book to the "Candianistas," who published poems, letters, reviews, and tributes in newspapers. During this period, opera ceased to be merely a spectacle. Printing presses, bilingual translations of works, and other publications explored this universe. Norma 's aria "Casta Diva" became a popular phenomenon and began to be sung in the streets, in popular songs, which led Tinhorão, a century later, to write that the Italian composer was one of those responsible for this musical popularization.

“I studied this issue of the modinha quite a bit, and it’s important to say that Candiani didn’t introduce the modinha to the theater. This type of lyrical song in Portuguese, which Candiani sang, with roots in the Luso-Brazilian exchange, was already present in theaters and drew heavily on the lyricism of Italian opera,” Stark points out. “The aria 'Casta Diva,' from the opera Norma , became very well-known. It’s a prayer for peace, within the drama of the character, who is in conflict. She is a religious and political leader betraying her people and her gods for love of a war enemy, and this must have had enormous power at that historical moment of Romanticism and the beginning of the Second Reign after the turbulent Regency period,” he assesses.

Ahead of its time

But, beyond her success on stage, the book also reveals conflicts. Candiani's separation from her first husband became public at a time when the domestic sphere was rigidly guarded. The singer used newspaper pages to denounce Gioacchino Candiani's behavior, reporting assaults and the misuse of her earnings.

Candiani also confronted patriarchal structures, negotiating contracts, demanding better working conditions, and making decisions about her own career. "She made very audacious decisions for the context in which she lived. One example of this is an episode from 1853, in which she contested a deduction from her salary, single-handedly denouncing the powerful businessman and actor João Caetano dos Santos, her boss at the Provisional Theater, to the State Secretariat for Imperial Affairs," states the author.

Throughout her life, the singer had three partners. After separating from her Italian husband, when she lost custody of her first daughter, she joined José de Almeida Cabral, a businessman, composer, and central figure among the Candianistas, with whom she had a second daughter and worked in lyrical-dramatic companies he created. In her final years, until her death, she had by her side the Portuguese actor, stage partner, and playwright Bartholomeu da Silva Magalhães.

While Candiani was the court's favorite voice at her peak, over time her career shifted to regional stages with the arrival of new singers. In her later years, Candiani faced difficulties and health problems. Almost blind due to cataracts, she lived modestly in Santa Cruz, where she died on February 28, 1890, at the age of 69, months after the end of the Second Reign. Her death received little attention in the press, a stark contrast to the enormous popularity she enjoyed during the Empire. "Regarding her last performance, I can't say for sure, but it was probably in Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais. In Rio, the last record is a concert from 1877," he recounts.

In the simple house where she spent her final years, there was a scrapbook filled with poems, drawings, autographs, and tributes collected throughout a life of acclaim – a historical document that the researcher is still searching for, even after the book's publication. “The location of this scrapbook is currently unknown, despite my efforts to find it. This scrapbook belonged to a military officer from Santa Cruz in the early 20th century and ended up in the collection of art dealer Jorge Getulio Veiga in the 1990s. It was intended to be reproduced in a publication by Quinta Cor publishing house in Rio de Janeiro around the same time, but this did not happen. It contains poems by her fans, as well as drawings and paintings by August Müller, José Reis de Carvalho, Buvelot, and Guillobel. Any information, please contact me at augustacandiani@gmail.com ,” she continues.

“Candiani’s ending in Santa Cruz, at the beginning of the Republic, is very significant,” says the author. “A central artist of an empire with an abrupt end finishes her life in a peripheral space, practically outside of public memory. The forgetting of her name was an attempt to erase the memory of an artist and the art of her time, but this book proves that this project doesn’t always succeed.”