![]() There are three football clubs in Brazil (including Club de Regatas Vasco da Gama) and Vasco Sports Club in Goa that were also named after him. The port city of Vasco da Gama in Goa is named after him, as is the crater Vasco da Gama on the Moon. The 19th century composer Louis-Albert Bourgault-Ducoudray composed an eponymous 1872 opera based on da Gama's life and exploits at sea. A 1989 production of the opera by the San Francisco Opera featured noted tenor Placido Domingo in the role of da Gama. Meyerbeer's working title for the opera was Vasco da Gama. The events depicted, however, are fictitious. The 1865 grand opera L'Africaine: Opéra en Cinq Actes, composed by Giacomo Meyerbeer from a libretto by Eugène Scribe, prominently includes the character of Vasco da Gama. The Portuguese national epic, the Lusíadas of Luís Vaz de Camões, largely concerns Vasco da Gama's voyages. Following da Gama's initial voyage, the Portuguese crown realized that securing outposts on the eastern coast of Africa would prove vital to maintaining national trade routes to the Far East. Beside the fact of the first voyage itself, it was his astute mix of politics and war on the other side of the world that placed Portugal in a prominent position in Indian Ocean trade. As much as anyone after Henry the Navigator, Vasco da Gama was responsible for Portugal's success as an early colonising power.
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