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.
Disse-Te Adeus E Morri
Amália Rodrigues Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
E o cais vazio de ti
Aceitou novas marés.
Gritos de búzios perdidos
Roubaram dos meus sentidos
A gaivota que tu és.
Gaivota de asas paradas
E acorda à noite a chorar.
Gaivota que faz o ninho
Porque perdeu o caminho
Onde aprendeu a sonhar.
Preso no ventre do mar
O meu triste respirar
Sofre a invenção das horas,
Pois na ausência que deixaste,
Meu amor, como ficaste,
Meu amor, como demoras.
The Portuguese song, "Disse-Te Adeus E Morri" by Amália Rodrigues, tells the story of a lover who said goodbye and died, leaving behind an empty pier. As new tides come and go, the lonely lover's senses are robbed by the sound of lost conches as the seagull, a symbol of their lover, flies away. The seagull that stays behind does not feel the early morning breeze, but wakes up at night to cry. It has lost its way and its ability to dream, just like the lover who lost their beloved.
The loneliness of the lover is further compounded by the vastness of the sea that surrounds them. They are trapped, unable to escape their grief and make their way back to the one they love. The weight of the absence left behind is too much to bear, leaving them with nothing but the invention of time. The unanswered question hangs in the air, "My love, how do you stay away for so long?"
The song is a mournful and poetic expression of heartbreak and the deep sense of loss experienced by someone who has been abandoned by their lover. The seagull metaphorically represents not just the lover but also the dream and hope of love that has been lost. The pain of the singer is palpable as they mournfully sing the lyrics of the song, which is regarded as one of the greatest examples of fado music, a traditional Portuguese music genre.
Line by Line Meaning
Disse-te adeus e morri
I bade you farewell and died within
E o cais vazio de ti
The port lay empty without you
Aceitou novas marés.
It welcomed new tides that came
Gritos de búzios perdidos
Lost conch shells screamed their cries
Roubaram dos meus sentidos
They robbed my senses from me
A gaivota que tu és.
The seagull that you were to me
Gaivota de asas paradas
A seagull with still wings to bear
Que não sente as madrugadas
Unfeeling towards early light
E acorda à noite a chorar.
But weeps in night's darkest might
Gaivota que faz o ninho
A seagull that builds its crown
Porque perdeu o caminho
Lost its way and thus came down
Onde aprendeu a sonhar.
From where it learnt to dream and soar
Preso no ventre do mar
Imprisoned in the womb of sea
O meu triste respirar
My breath with sadness catches spree
Sofre a invenção das horas,
Endures the creation of time
Pois na ausência que deixaste,
For in your absence, I'm in mime
Meu amor, como ficaste,
My love, how did you remain?
Meu amor, como demoras.
My love, why do you stall again?
Contributed by Dominic C. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
mariaemilia matoscordeiro
O Vasco de Lima Couto e o David Mourão Ferreira, para além da própria Amália, são os expoentes máximos da autoria dos poemas que ajudaram a genial fadista a dar-nos temas que nos enchem a alma e que perdurarão pelos tempos fora.
Ana Ferreira
1o1o1i1oi11o1tttyittttittyttytytttttttu77yui11ii1i1i1i1i1i1i1i1i1i1i11i18i11811i17ii1i11i1i1i1ii1i1i1i1i1
Nuno Mendes
Inesquecível Amália seus fados são uma autêntica terapia para a alma...
Raul Ferreira
É um dos fados da nossa saudosa Amália que ficará para sempre.. Nunca serás esquecida..
Miguel Catarino
Que bom! Há muito tempo que estava á espera dessa música. Era a banda 2 da Face B do EP «Amália Rodrigues - Vou Dar de Beber á Dor», e a melodia é a do Fado Zé António da Maria Teresa de Noronha. Continuem assim.
Maria von Gradowski
Lindo, lindo, lindo de morrer...
Ilda Costa
MARAVILHAAAAAAAAAAAA
Neuza Santos
Amalia a voz de Portugal
antonio nunes
Bom poeta o Vasco Lima Couto , mas injustamente esquecido.
Adriana plima
Will never be another Amalia.