SOURCE: "A Night at the Opera: Concierto barroco and Motezuma," in Revista de Estudios Hispanicos, Vol. 21, No. 2, May, 1987, pp. 23-38.

In the following essay, Bost asserts, "It is in Concierto barroco that Carpentier most imaginatively combines two of his principal concerns in his exploration of historical America: the play of fact with fictional exposition, and the role of music as a cultural force."

Alejo Carpentier's fiction often describes watershed events of Latin American history and culture. Novels such as ¡Ecué-Yamba-O! and El reino de este mundo present vibrant images of the African impact in the Caribbean. El recurso del método portrays a dictatorship as a characteristically Latin American institution. Carpentier returns to the genesis of America in El arpa y la sombra, a novel about Columbus's first voyage to the New World and his contentious historical reception in the nineteenth century. Concierto barroco explores through the...