Abstract
What is the relationship between a play and a panoramic painting of the city, displayed in a rotunda placed in a central point of Brazil's federal capital? The musical theatre O Tribofe (1892) by Arthur Azevedo presented in the first scene the circular panorama of Rio de Janeiro city, painted by Meirelles and the Belgian painter Langerock. This panorama was exposed, in 1891, in the XV de Novembro Square, within a particular architecture, called rotunda. Right at the beginning of the play, the panorama was experienced by a family from backwoods of Brazil who were passing through Rio de Janeiro at the end of the nineteenth century, and suggested that the metropolis could be read by visitors and recognized by its inhabitants, such as a picture or a map. Musical theatre and panorama are forms of entertainment for heterogeneous public, however, both also training the eye for a particular way of seeing the urban landscape, in a "pedagogical" way.
Keywords:
Arthur Azevedo; Rio de Janeiro city; Metropolis; Theatre; Fine arts
