Composer
Biography
Antônio Carlos Gomes was first taught in Campinas by his father, the bandmaster Manuel José Gomes, and went on to the Imperial Conservatory in Rio de Janeiro and made his name with two Portuguese-language operas, A noite do castelo and Joana de Flandres. Support from Emperor Pedro II sent him to Milan. Il Guarany, staged at La Scala in 1870 after José de Alencar's novel O Guarani, set a Brazilian subject inside an Italian operatic frame and won Europe's attention; Fosca, Salvator Rosa, Maria Tudor, Lo schiavo and Condor followed. He returned to Brazil in the last year of his life to direct the conservatory at Belém. In Milan he studied with Lauro Rossi, and beside the operas he left songs, instrumental pieces and the vocal-symphonic Colombo.