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.
La femme du berger
Amália Rodrigues Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Lucchesi/Plante
Interprète: Amalia RODRIGUEZ
Un village à flanc de roche,
Quatre murs vêtus de lierre,
Quelques chèvres famillières
Ma maison est isolée
Tout au fond de la vallée.
Celui qui m'a pour compagne
Est berger dans la montagne
Il chante sa peine,
Pour le troupeau qu'il mêne
Je l'attends dans ma demeure
Lentement passent les heures.
Que sont longues les semaines
Si loin de celui que j'aime
Il descendra vers la plaine
A la saison finissante
Avec sa cape de laine
Et sa chienne bondissante
Pour rejoindre sa compagne
Il quittera sa montagne
Que sont longues les semaines
Si loin de celui que j'aime
Avec du coeur à l'ouvrage
Pas besoin d'être bien riche
Pour trouver dans les parages
Quatre pieds de terre en friche
Quand il taillera sa vigne
De loin je lui ferai signe
Plus le sort est solitaire
Je l'aurai la vie entière
Il chante son rêve
Dans l'aube qui se lève
Que la vierge l'accompagne
Dans le sentier des montagnes
Que sont longues les semaines
Si loin de celui que j'aime
The song "La Femme Du Berger" by Amalia Rodrigues tells the story of a woman who lives in a small village surrounded by nature. She lives in a house at the bottom of a valley, isolated from the rest of the community. The woman's partner is a shepherd, who spends most of his time in the mountains, tending to his flock of sheep. The shepherd's travels leave the woman alone for weeks on end, only to reunite with him during certain seasons when he brings his sheep down to the plain. The woman longs for her partner, as time passes slowly when she is without him.
The lyrics describe the couple's love as enduring through the separation because they are bound together by their mutual love for the land. The shepherd and the woman both work hard to cultivate the land, and the shepherd's dream is to own a small vineyard that they can share. Although the woman is isolated from the rest of the village and her partner spends much time away, they both find solace and meaning in their connection to nature and the land. The song is a tale of love and devotion that is bound to the earth.
Line by Line Meaning
Un village à flanc de roche,
A village clinging to the mountainside,
Quatre murs vêtus de lierre,
Four walls covered in ivy,
Des broussailles qui s'accrochent
Bushes that cling to the rocks,
Quelques chèvres familières
Several familiar goats.
Ma maison est isolée
My house is isolated,
Tout au fond de la vallée.
Deep in the valley.
Celui qui m'a pour compagne
He who is my partner,
Est berger dans la montagne
He is a shepherd in the mountains.
Il chante sa peine,
He sings of his troubles,
Pour le troupeau qu'il mêne
For the flock he leads.
Je l'attends dans ma demeure
I wait for him in my home,
Lentement passent les heures.
Slowly the hours pass.
Que sont longues les semaines
How long the weeks are,
Si loin de celui que j'aime
So far from the one I love.
Il descendra vers la plaine
He will come down to the plain,
A la saison finissante
At the end of the season.
Avec sa cape de laine
With his woolen cape.
Et sa chienne bondissante
And his jumping dog.
Pour rejoindre sa compagne
To reunite with his partner.
Il quittera sa montagne
He will leave his mountain.
Avec du coeur à l'ouvrage
With a heart for work,
Pas besoin d'être bien riche
No need to be wealthy,
Pour trouver dans les parages
To find nearby,
Quatre pieds de terre en friche
Four feet of uncultivated land.
Quand il taillera sa vigne
When he tends his vineyard,
De loin je lui ferai signe
From afar, I'll signal to him.
Plus le sort est solitaire
The more solitary my fate,
Je l'aurai la vie entière
I will have him my entire life.
Il chante son rêve
He sings of his dream,
Dans l'aube qui se lève
In the dawn that's rising.
Que la vierge l'accompagne
May the virgin accompany him,
Dans le sentier des montagnes
On the mountain path.
Que sont longues les semaines
How long the weeks are,
Si loin de celui que j'aime
So far from the one I love.
Writer(s): Jacques Plante, Roger Lucchesi
Contributed by Wyatt B. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
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