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.
Libertação
Amália Rodrigues Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
A nossa vida enredada,
Ó meu amor, se fugirmos,
Ninguém saberá de nada!
Na esquina de cada rua,
Uma sombra nos espreita.
E nos olhares se insinua,
Fui ao campo, e vi os ramos
Decepados e torcidos.
Ó meu amor, se ficamos,
Pobres dos nossos sentidos!
Em tudo vejo fronteiras,
Fronteiras ao nosso amor.
Longe daqui, onde queiras,
A vida será maior!
Nem as esperanças do céu
Me conseguem demover.
Este amor é teu e meu,
Só na Terra o queremos ter.
In Amália Rodrigues’s song Libertação, the singer addresses a situation where the couple’s life is in tangled up and full of danger. The first verse mentions the beach where their life is enmeshed and entangled. The singer suggests that if they flee, nobody will question or know anything about them. However, the couple can’t ignore the danger lurking around them. The second verse mentions the shadow following and suspicions arising. Despite the fear and danger, the couple is tempted to stay and indulge in their love. The third verse talks about the mutilated branches in the fields, which represents the destruction brought by the surrounding threats. The singer expresses her anxiety about the consequences of staying together and how it will affect their senses. She urges her love to leave this place and escape to a new life where their love will thrive. In the last verse, the singer professes their love and how it's an earthly and realistic thing. They don't want a dreamy, idealistic love that only exists in the sky.
Line by Line Meaning
Fui à praia, e vi nos limos
A nossa vida enredada,
Ó meu amor, se fugirmos,
Ninguém saberá de nada!
I went to the beach and saw our tangled lives in the seaweed. My love, if we escape, no one will find out.
Na esquina de cada rua,
Uma sombra nos espreita.
E nos olhares se insinua,
De repente, uma suspeita.
In every corner of the street, a shadow is lurking, insinuating suspicion in every glance.
Fui ao campo, e vi os ramos
Decepados e torcidos.
Ó meu amor, se ficamos,
Pobres dos nossos sentidos!
I went to the countryside and saw the twisted, broken branches. My love, if we stay, our senses will be impoverished.
Em tudo vejo fronteiras,
Fronteiras ao nosso amor.
Longe daqui, onde queiras,
A vida será maior!
I see borders everywhere that limit our love. Away from here, wherever you want to go, life will be greater.
Nem as esperanças do céu
Me conseguem demover.
Este amor é teu e meu,
Só na Terra o queremos ter.
Not even the hopes of heaven can deter me. This love is yours and mine, and we only want to have it on Earth.
Contributed by Kylie J. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
A.Ferreira Ferreira
Única! Inimitável! A ouvir sempre em silêncio e recatadamente.
Agostinho Almeida
@
Agostinho Almeida
A.Ferreira Ferreira
Alicia Diaz
AMÁLIA 🌻❤️🇵🇹 para que mais!!!!
Elisa Vieira
Amalia...
Alicia Diaz
Eu também..boa noite..um bem haja
Elisa Vieira
@Alicia Diaz adoro Amalia xxx
Alicia Diaz
AMÁLIA 🌻❤️🇵🇹 para que mais!!!!
cacaubh72
Patrimônio Nacional ?
Alicia Diaz
cacaubh72 sim,e patrimônio da humanidade