The Teatros Colón of Bogotá and Buenos Aires: A Tale of Two Theaters

In both Bogotá and Buenos Aires the principal venue for musical high culture is known as Teatro Colón, and both theaters were built during the same historical period (opened in 1895 and 1908 respectively). Both represent a culmination of efforts going back to the late colonial period and were intended to be symbols of their nations’ adherence to the highest European cultural standards. However, while Buenos Aires thanks to its greater wealth and its easier accessibility for visiting European artists early developed a rich musical tradition, opera and related art forms in Bogotá had a precarious existence for some time even after Colombia’s Teatro Colón was built. In capacity and range of installations the Argentine theater is also in a different category from its Colombian counterpart. But in both cases the theater has been used at times for purposes unrelated to its cultural mission, and the different if parallel histories of the two Colóns inevitably mirror many of the other differences and similarities between the two Latin American countries.