Born in Lisbon, Portugal, official documents have her date of birth as the 23rd July, but Rodrigues always said her birthday was the 1st July 1920. She was born in the rua Martim Vaz (Martim Vaz Street), freguesia of Pena, Lisbon. Her father was a trumpet player and cobbler from Fundão who returned there when Amália was just over a year old, leaving her to live in Lisbon with her maternal grandmother in a deeply Catholic environment until she was fourteen, when her parents returned to the capital and she moved back in with them.
She was known as the "Rainha do Fado" ("Queen of Fado"), and was most influential in popularising fado worldwide. She was unquestionably the most important figure in the genre’s development, by virtue of an innate interpretive talent carefully nurtured throughout a forty-year recording and stage career. Rodrigues' performances and choice of repertoire pushed fado’s boundaries and helped redefine it and reconfigure it for her and subsequent generations. In effect, Rodrigues wrote the rulebook on what fado could be and on how a female singer - or fadista - should perform it, to the extent that she remains an unsurpassable model and an unending source of repertoire for all those who came afterwards.
After a few years of amateur performances, Rodrigues’ first professional engagement in a fado venue took place in 1939, and she quickly became a regular guest star in stage revues. There she met Frederico Valério, a classically-trained composer who, recognising the potential in such a voice, wrote expansive melodies custom-designed for Rodrigues’ voice, breaking the rules of fado by adding orchestral accompaniment.
Her Portuguese popularity began to extend abroad with trips to Spain, a lengthy stay in Brazil (where, in 1945, she made her first recordings on Brazilian label Continental) and Paris (in 1949). In 1950, while performing at the Marshall Plan international benefit shows, she introduced "April in Portugal" to international audiences (under its original title "Coimbra"). In the early fifties, the patronage of the acclaimed Portuguese poet David Mourão-Ferreira marked the beginning of a new phase; Rodrigues sang many of the country's greatest poets, and some wrote lyrics specifically for her.
In 1954, Rodrigues' international career skyrocketed through her presence in Henri Verneuil’s film The Lovers of Lisbon, where she had a supporting role and performed on-screen. By the late 1950s the USA, England, and France had become her major international markets (Japan and Italy followed in the 1970s); in France especially, her popularity rivalled her Portuguese success, and she graduated to headliner at the prestigious Olympia theatre within a matter of months. Over the years, she performed nearly all over the world, going as far as the Soviet Union and Israel.
At the end of the 1950s, Rodrigues took a year off. She returned in 1962 with a richer voice, concentrating on recording and performing live at a slower pace. Her comeback album, 1962's Amália Rodrigues, was her first collaboration with French composer Alain Oulman, her main songwriter and musical producer throughout the decade. As Valério had before him, Oulman wrote melodies for her that transcended the conventions of fado. Rodrigues did not shy away from controversy: her performance in Carlos Vilardebó’s 1964 arthouse film The Enchanted Islands was better received than the film, based on a short story by Herman Melville, and her 1965 recording of poems by 16th century poet Luís de Camões generated acres of newspaper polemics. Yet her popularity remained untouched. Her 1968 single "Vou Dar de Beber à Dor" broke all sales records, and her 1970 album Com que Voz, considered by many her definitive recording, won a number of international awards.
During the 1970s, Rodrigues concentrated on live work, and embarked upon a heavy schedule of worldwide concert performances. During the frenetic period after the 25th April 1974 she was falsely accused of being a covert agent of the PIDE, causing some trauma to her public life and career. (In fact, during the Salazar years, Rodrigues had been an occasional financial supporter of some communists in need.) Her return to the recording studio in 1977 with Cantigas numa Língua Antiga was received as a triumph. The 1980s and 1990s brought her enthronement as a living legend. Her last all-new studio recording, Lágrima, was released in 1983. It was followed by a series of previously lost or unreleased recordings, and the smash success of two greatest hits collections that sold over 200,000 copies combined.
Despite a series of illnesses involving her voice, Rodrigues continued recording as late as 1990. She eventually retreated from public performance, although her career gained in stature with an official biography by historian and journalist Vítor Pavão dos Santos, and a five-hour television series documenting her fifty-year career, featuring rare archival footage (later distilled into the ninety-minute film documentary, The Art of Amália). Its director, Bruno de Almeida, has also produced Amália, Live in New York City (a concert film of her 1990 performance at New York City Hall).
Rodrigues died on the 6th October 1999 at the age of seventy-nine in her home in Lisbon. Portugal's government promptly declared a period of national mourning. Her house (in Rua de São Bento) is now a museum. She is now buried at the National Pantheon alongside other Portuguese notables.
1946.
A Rosas de Meu Caminho
Amália Rodrigues Lyrics
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Pedras do meu caminho
Não sabe que encontrei sempre nas
Rosas que me deram
Perfumes que au colher, me deixaram espinhos
Dos olhos me caiu o sangue que fizeram
Porque o perfume é passageiro, é fugaz
Firme à cinza aquecida
E os espinhos numa ferida que me doa
Na alma de uma pessoa duram tanto como a vida
Quisera como dantes saber rir em gargalhadas
Tão ricas que no ar
Ganhassem formas esculpidas
Porém no sol da vida há nuvens equiparadas
Enchem de sombras negras a
Luz de certas vidas
E quando canto todos vêem com certeza
Na minha vida a beleza dum
Sonho que quer vingar
Mas ninguém pode dar vida a um sonho belo
É construir um castelo que é todo feito no ar
In the song "A Rosas de Meu Caminho" by Amália Rodrigues, the lyrics convey deep emotional and philosophical reflections on life's challenges and the transient nature of beauty and joy. The opening lines speak metaphorically about the misconception that the "stones" encountered on one's path are actually "roses." This juxtaposition suggests that hardships and difficulties are often mistaken for beauty or goodness by others. The singer reflects on their experiences, highlighting how the sweet scent of roses given to them also brought pain in the form of thorns, symbolizing the duality of positive and negative outcomes in life.
As the lyrics progress, there is a contemplation on the impermanence of beauty and joy. The comparison of perfume to a fleeting flame emphasizes the fleeting nature of pleasure and happiness. The analogy extends to the contrast between the temporary allure of fragrance and the lasting pain caused by thorns, which can be seen as a metaphor for enduring struggles and wounds that impact the soul deeply. This reflection on the paradoxical coexistence of joy and suffering adds layers of complexity to the narrative of the singer's life journey.
The longing for the carefree laughter and joy of the past is expressed in the desire to experience unbridled happiness again. The imagery of laughter taking on tangible, sculpted forms in the air conveys a sense of nostalgia for simpler times when joy seemed more tangible and transformative. However, the acknowledgment of life's challenges and uncertainties is also present, symbolized by the mention of shadows casting darkness on certain lives. This contrast between the past innocence and present realities suggests a sense of loss and disillusionment with the passage of time.
The final stanza delves into the theme of dreams, beauty, and the intangible nature of aspirations. The singer expresses a yearning for their dreams to become reality, for beauty to prevail, and for their idealized vision of life to manifest. However, the poignant realization that a beautiful dream cannot be brought to life or materialized like a physical structure underscores the ethereal and fragile nature of human desires and ambitions. The metaphor of building a castle in the air embodies the idea that some dreams may remain unattainable or exist only in the realm of imagination, emphasizing the bittersweet essence of longing and the inherent limitations of human existence.
Lyrics © O/B/O APRA AMCOS
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
J Soares
Quem julga que são rosas as pedras do meu caminho
Não sabe que encontrei sempre nas rosas que me deram
Perfumes que ao colher, me deixaram espinhos
Dos olhos me caiu o sangue que fizeram
Porque o perfume é passageiro, é fugaz
Como lume que nos faz mais firme à cinza aquecida
E os espinhos numa ferida que me doa
Na alma de uma pessoa duram tanto como a vida
Quisera como dantes saber rir em gargalhadas
Tão ricas que no ar ganhassem formas esculpidas
Porém no sol da vida há nuvens equiparadas
Enchem de sombras negras a luz de certas vidas
E quando canto todos vêem com certeza
Na minha vida a beleza dum sonho que quer vingar
Mas ninguém pode dar vida a um sonho belo
É construir um castelo que é todo feito no ar
Rodrigues Yvonne
Magistral...Saudades..da..Nossa..Diva..do..Fado...🍃🌹🍃⭐️🍃
Pecos V
una clase de canto magistral ¡¡¡ bravo Amalia ¡¡¡ ¡¡¡
Alicia Diaz
Guizo de Deus....
Trixie-Elaine Heinz
Amalia is crowned rose herself!
Anoushka G
can anyone translate this song to english PLEASE??
Alicia Diaz
Anoushka G Porquê é que a senhora não está a estudar Português? AMÁLIA É PORTUGUESA.o que vôce QUER... é impossível...boa noite..e bem haja.
J Soares
Hi Anoushka this is my favourite Amalia Rodrigues song. It is not a very known one. Here is my humble translation. It is very difficult to translate poetry but I tried:
Whoever thinks the stones of my path are roses
Don't know that I always found in the roses they gave me
Perfumes upon harvesting that left me thorns
From my eyes fell the blood they made
Because the perfume is transient, it is fugitive
Like the fire that bring us more together with the heated ash
And the thorns in a wound that would hurt me
In a person's soul they last as long as life
I wish I knew as before to be merry in joyful laughs
With a melody so rich that gained sculpted shapes in the air
However in the sun of life there are similar clouds
They fill with black shadows the light of certain lives
And when I sing, everyone clearly sees
In my life the beauty of a dream that wants to become true
But no one can bring life to a beautiful dream
It is like building a castle entirely made in the air