Machado, Augusto (EN)

Machado Augusto de Oliveira, *27 December 1845 Lisbon, †26 March 1924 Lisbon, Portuguese composer. He initially studied in Lisbon, and from 1867 in Paris with A. Lavignac and A.L. Danhauser. Around 1873, he established contacts with Massenet and Saint-Saëns, who influenced his style. He served as director of the opera company at Lisbon’s Teatro Sâo Carlos from 1892 to 1908, as professor of vocal studies from 1893, and as director of the Lisbon Conservatory from 1901 to 1910 and again from 1918 to 1919. Machado is one of the most outstanding Portuguese composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, both for his professionalism and his attempts to overcome Italian influences in his stage works.

Machado’s most outstanding opera, Laurianne, based on G. Sand’s novel Les beaux messieurs de Bois doré, bears the hallmarks of French lyric opera; staged in 1883 in Marseille, and later also in Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro, it brought Machado international fame. In his subsequent operas, I Doria (1887) and Mario Wetter (1898), with librettos in Italian (the latter based on a text by R. Leoncavallo), Machado returned to the tradition of Italian opera; later, he turned to the operetta genre. He also composed songs, piano and organ pieces. Machado’s only symphonic poem, Camões e os Lusiadas, has never been performed.

Literature: F. M. de Sampayo Ribeiro A música em Portugal nos Séculos XVIII e XIX, Lisbon, 1938; T. Borba, F. Lopes-Graça: Dicionário de música (ilustrado), vol. 2, Lisbon 1958, pp. 155/56; P. Gomez-Ribeiro Lauriane ou Les Beaux Messieurs de Bois-Doré: métamorphose de l’oeuvre (du roman de Sand à l’opéra de Machado) – dramaturgie, poétique et sémiologie musicale, thesis at the University of Paris VIII, 1995; F. Carvalheiro Lauriane in breve, program booklet of the Teatro Nacional São Carlos, Lisbon 2005–2006 season, T. Cascudo Machado Augusto, Enciclopédia da Música em Portugal no Século XX, vol. 3, ed. S. Castelo Branco, pp. 725–726.