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.
Fria Claridade
Amália Rodrigues Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Daquele tão triste dia,
Grande, grande era a cidade,
E ninguém me conhecia!
Então passaram por mim
Dois olhos lindos, depois,
Julguei sonhar, vendo enfim,
Em todos os meus sentidos,
Tive presságios de Deus.
E aqueles olhos tão lindos
Afastaram-se dos meus!
Acordei, a claridade
Fez-se maior e mais fria.
Grande, grande era a cidade,
E ninguém me conhecia!
The lyrics to Amalia Rodrigues’s song Fria Claridade speak to the experience of loneliness and longing for connection in a bustling city. The singer is surrounded by the bright and cold light of day in a city that feels overwhelming and empty. The lyrics convey a sense of disorientation and even despair as the singer laments that nobody knows them in this vast and impersonal place.
However, there is a glimmer of hope in the form of two beautiful eyes that catch the singer’s attention. The singer is struck by the beauty of these eyes and wonders if they could possibly be real. This interaction offers a moment of transcendence and possibly even a sign of divine intervention. But just as suddenly as they appeared, the eyes disappear, and the singer is left alone once again with the harsh light of day and the realization that they are still unknown in this city.
Overall, the lyrics to Fria Claridade are a poignant and relatable portrayal of the experience of feeling lost and anonymous in a big city, and the small moments of hope that can offer some relief from that feeling.
Line by Line Meaning
No meio da claridade,
In the midst of clarity,
Daquele tão triste dia,
Of that very sad day,
Grande, grande era a cidade,
The city was vast, so vast,
E ninguém me conhecia!
And nobody knew me!
Então passaram por mim
Then two beautiful eyes passed by me,
Dois olhos lindos, depois,
Two beautiful eyes, then again,
Julguei sonhar, vendo enfim,
I thought I was dreaming, seeing at last,
Dois olhos, como há só dois?
Two eyes like there are only two?
Em todos os meus sentidos,
In all my senses,
Tive presságios de Deus.
I had signs from God.
E aqueles olhos tão lindos
And those eyes so beautiful,
Afastaram-se dos meus!
Moved away from mine!
Acordei, a claridade
I woke up, the clarity
Fez-se maior e mais fria.
Became greater and colder.
Grande, grande era a cidade,
The city was vast, so vast,
E ninguém me conhecia!
And nobody knew me!
Contributed by Isaac F. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
@ivonapoleao3646
Amalia unica! Vinte anos depois da sua morte continua a surpreender-me com fados que nunca ouvi. Hoje continuo a descobrir Amalia...que maravilha!
@Vucarely
Muito obrigado a todos, Noel, nasa, Orlando ,Valéria, e António. Sinto-me feliz. Amália contnua a estar presente em nós, Ela nos junta, e nós NÃO DEIXAMOS DE AMAR ESSE SER FABULOSO. Um abraço a todos. Américo
@user-xr3ow1go6z
Eu descobrir Amália recente com quase 50 anos 😢 a cada música descoberta uma nova emoção ❤
@melissacruz2395
A nossa Amália que lindo é prazeroso de ouvir a voz da alma como se lê-se o nosso coração só ela mesmo única orgulho dessa voz tão nobre e tão nossa o sentimento Português 👏🇵🇹
@RuySerrano1
Uma voz de ouro que perdurará até à eternidade. Saudades muitas me deixaste, minha diva.
@ofelialopes14
Amália, a maior! Rainha do Fado. ´´Unica, irrepetível, voz maravilhooooooooooosa! Inesquecível! também aprecio e muito Mariza, mas para mim AMÁLIA É DIVINA!!!!!
@fatimanunes6389
Divina eloquência a sua voz!!! Que se elevava ao céu, como se cada palavra se abrisse em asas, e se divinizasse sempre mais alto, na cadência das alturas!!!
@sergiorosario5242
Em novo não podia ouvir fados,hoje com 60 anos arrepia-me e passo horas a ouvir e a deliciar-me com Amália Rodrigues.
@Niya847
Tudo o que cantas é um fenómeno, Amália!
@mazevedo620
orgulho portugues te amo meu portugal