Letter from Buenos Aires

Caruso, Muzio, Melchior, Callas, Crespin, Nilsson, Vickers, Quilico, Domingo and Pavarotti have all sung on its stage.

Saint-Saëns, Mascagni, Respighi, and Richard Strauss came to conduct or supervise local premieres of their operas. And its podium has also been mounted by Stravinsky, de Falla, Honegger, Villa Lobos, Ginastera, Menotti, Fritz Busch, Erich Kleiber, von Karajan, Bernstein, Boulez and others.

Visitors have included European royalty, American Presidents Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, as well as former First Lady Michelle Obama and her two daughters.

And it’s where Juan Perón, with First Lady Eva Perón at his side, made his first public appearance as president of Argentina in July 1946. The couple, to be sure, would show up there many more times, Eva in flowing gowns, glitterati and paparazzi in tow.