El gran teatro

infobox Book |
name = El gran teatro
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author = Manuel Mujica Laínez
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country = Argentina
language = Spanish
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genre = Novel
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release_date = 1980
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media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
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El gran teatro (Spanish "The Great (or Grand) Theatre") is a 1980 novel by Manuel Mujica Laínez.

The whole action of the novel takes place during a performance of Wagner's "Parsifal" at Buenos Aires' famous opera house, the Teatro Colón.

The Colón is, emblematically and par excellence, ("por antonomasia", as a "porteño" might say) The Great Theatre, a giant and impossibly splendiferous jewellery box built, in an improbable bygone age, for a glitteringly self-assured class of leaders (or, alternatively, disgusting show-offs) to show itself off.

Several such characters are delightedly (and ambiguously) shown in full flight, with the added and inimitable Mujica Laínez touch...that everyone and everybody in this novel, like a suspiciously familiar central character's emerald necklace, turns out to be a "fake".

A key link in Manuel Mujica Laínez' Buenos Aires cycle.