Amália da Piedade Rebordão Rodrigues (1920–1999) was a Portuguese singer an… Read Full Bio ↴Amália da Piedade Rebordão Rodrigues (1920–1999) was a Portuguese singer and actress.

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.

Fado dos fados
Amália Rodrigues Lyrics

Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴

Aquele amor derradeiro
Maldito e abençoado
Pago a sangue e a dinheiro
Já não é amor, é fado
Quando o ciúme é tão forte
Que ao próprio bem desejado
Só tem ódio ou dá a morte
Já não é ciúme, é fado

Canto da nossa tristeza
Choro da nossa alegria
Praga que é quase uma reza
Loucura que é poesia
Um sentimento que passa
A ser eterno cuidado
E razão de um desgraça
Assim tem de ser, é fado
O remorso de quem sente
Que se voltasse ao passado
Pecaria novamente
Já não é remorso, é fado
E esta saudade de agora
Não de algum bem acabado
Mas das saudades de outrora
Já não é saudade, é fado
Canto da nossa tristeza
Choro da nossa alegria
Praga que é quase uma reza
Loucura que é poesia
Um sentimento que passa
A ser eterno cuidado
E razão de um desgraça
Assim tem de ser, é fado
Um sentimento que passa
A ser eterno cuidado

E razão de um desgraça
Assim tem de ser, é fado

Overall Meaning

The lyrics to Amália Rodrigues's Fado dos fados speak of the all-consuming nature of love, jealousy, and regret that have been embodied in the Portuguese musical genre, Fado. The first stanza refers to a love that is both cursed and blessed, paid with both blood and money. The use of the word "fado" in this context indicates that this love has become a fate that cannot be escaped. The following stanza speaks of jealousy that is so strong that it can lead to hatred and even death, with the same implication that this is a predestined part of life. The chorus emphasizes the role that Fado plays in representing the sadness of our lives and the joy that we can feel despite the difficulties.

The third stanza speaks of the omnipresent nature of Fado, describing it as a prayer that is almost a curse or a madness that is elevated into poetry. The following stanza speaks of remorse, the feeling of having sinned again even if they could go back in time. Similarly, the next stanza moves from describing saudade, or nostalgia, as a longing for a past happiness to the idea that this feeling, too, has become a preordained aspect of life, cannot escape it. Finally, the song ends with a repetition of the chorus, emphasizing the fact that Fado represents a feeling that transcends the individual and can even feel like a curse or a destiny.

Line by Line Meaning

Aquele amor derradeiro
That final love

Maldito e abençoado
Both cursed and blessed

Pago a sangue e a dinheiro
Paid with blood and money

Já não é amor, é fado
It's no longer love, it's fate

Quando o ciúme é tão forte
When jealousy is so strong

Que ao próprio bem desejado
That even desired good

Só tem ódio ou dá a morte
Only brings hate or death

Já não é ciúme, é fado
It's not jealousy, it's fate

Canto da nossa tristeza
Song of our sadness

Choro da nossa alegria
Tears of our joy

Praga que é quase uma reza
Curse that's almost a prayer