Carnaval 2Carnaval: The Brazilian Popular Opera“All societies alternate their lives between routines and rites, work and feast, body andsoul, things of men and matters of gods, ordinary periods – where life elapses with no problems – and feasts, rites, celebrations, miracles and extraordinary occasions, where everything can be perceived through a new prism, position, perspective, angle...” (DaMatta, 1984, p. 67).Under this light, as the mundane Greco-Roman pagan festivals which celebrated thereturn of spring and rebirth of nature intersected with the sacred in the form of the meat-eating prohibition during Lent, carnaval, whose etymology is believed to stem out of the Latin termcarnelevarium, meaning “to take away [or to remove] meat”, emerged as means to provide for alast opportunity for indulgence and partying before the abstinence and privations of the forty-day period of fasting and penitence before Easter (Carnival, 2007).During the Renaissance, carnaval, being precursory to the celebrations brought to theAmericas, where it was once again transformed by African and Native American traditions of music and dance, was prevalently celebrated with elaborate formal costume-and-mask balls inFrance, Italy and Spain (Carnaval do Brasil, 2007).Inasmuch as carnaval, consisting of socio-culturally-sensitive merry-making and revelry,was celebrated all over Brazil by the end of the 18th century, it was then deemed to be agrotesque popular festivity which, in light of the era’s religious morals, was subdued to a seriesof unsuccessful prohibitions and police control which targeted its extinction (Carnaval do Brasil,2007). By the end of the 19
th
century, nonetheless, the festivity no longer held the same stigmaand the refined Parisian-style costume and mask balls started being put aside in favor of a moreimpromptu celebration. Hence, by 1919, a number of people, indiscriminately referred to as“blocks,” self organized and took over the streets of Rio de Janeiro, setting the model for the
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