Inaugurated in 1896, during the rubber boom, the Manaus opera house is an architectural jewel that was supposed to turn this city in the heart of the Amazon rainforest into one of the great centers of Western civilization. This dream did not survive the many economic crises that have punctuated Brazil’s history. Laida Azkona Goñi and Txalo Toloza-Fernández describe the transformations of this opera house that was also the subject of Werner Herzog’s film Fitzcarraldo. By comparing its fate with that of the gigantic Arena Amazonia stadium built to host the World Cup in 2014, they ask themselves what delusions of grandeur push adventurers and unscrupulous investors to try to seize control of Amazonia, dispossessing indigenous people of their land and systematically destroying a forest indispensable to the planet’s ecological balance

Hugues Le Tanneur