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.
Ojos verdes
Amália Rodrigues Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Miraba encenderce la noche de Mayo
Pasaban los hombres y yo sonreía
Hasta que en mi puerta paraste el caballo
Serrana me das candela y yo te dije gaché
Ay ven y tómame mis labios
Y yo fuego te daré dejaste el caballo
Y lumbre te dí
Mayo tus ojos pa' mí ojos verdes
Verdes como la albahaca
Verdes como el trigo verde
Y el verde, verde limón ojos verdes, verdes
Con brillo de faca
Que se han clavaito en mi corazón
Pa mí ya no hay soles lucero, ni luna
No hay más que unos ojos que mi vida son
Ojos verdes, verdes como la albahaca
Verdes como el trigo verde
Y el verde, verde limón
Vimos desde el cuarto despertar
Y sonar el alba en la torre la vela
Dejaste mi brazo cuando amanecía
Y en mi boca un gusto a menta y canela
Serrana para un vestido yo te quiero regalar
Yo te dije está cumplio
No me tienes que dar ná subiste al caballo
Te fuiste de mí y nunca otra noche
Mas bella de Mayo han vuelto a vivir
In Amália Rodrigues's song "Ojos verdes" (Green Eyes), the lyrics tell a story of a woman who appears to be waiting in a brothel, leaning on its doorstep. As she watches the night come alive in May, men pass by and she smiles at them. However, her attention is captured when a man stops his horse in front of her door. She says to him, "Serrano, you give me fire, and I will give you my lips." The man leaves his horse and she gives him warmth and passion in return. The song describes the man's eyes as being green like basil, green as the green wheat, and green like a lime. These green eyes have deeply affected her heart, and she declares that she no longer sees the sun, the stars, nor the moon; she only sees the captivating green eyes. The song ends with her reminiscing about the beautiful May night they shared together.
Line by Line Meaning
Apoyá en el quicio de la mancebía
Resting on the entrance of the brothel
Miraba encenderce la noche de Mayo
Watching the May night ignite
Pasaban los hombres y yo sonreía
Men were passing by and I used to smile
Hasta que en mi puerta paraste el caballo
Until you stopped your horse at my door
Serrana me das candela y yo te dije gaché
Hey, country woman, you give me fire and I told you, friend
Ay ven y tómame mis labios
Oh, come and take my lips
Y yo fuego te daré dejaste el caballo
And I'll give you fire, you left the horse
Y lumbre te dí
And I gave you brightness
Y fueron dos verdes luceros de Mayo tus ojos pa' mí
And your eyes, two green May stars, were for me
Ojos verdes verdes como la albahaca
Green eyes, green like basil
Verdes como el trigo verde
Green like the green wheat
Y el verde verde limón ojos verdes verdes
And the lemon green, green eyes
Con brillo de faca
With a blade's shine
Que se han clavaito en mi corazón
That have pierced into my heart
Pa mí ya no hay soles lucero ni luna
For me, there are no suns, no bright stars, or moon
No hay más que unos ojos que mi vida son
There is only a pair of eyes that are my life
Ojos verdes verdes como la albahaca
Green eyes, green like basil
Verdes como el trigo verde
Green like the green wheat
Y el verde verde limón
And the lemon green, green
Vimos desde el cuarto despertar
We saw from the room awakening
Y sonar el alba en la torre la vela
And the dawn ringing from the tower's candles
Dejaste mi brazo cuando amanecía
You left my arm as dawn was breaking
Y en mi boca un gusto a menta y canela
And in my mouth a taste of mint and cinnamon
Serrana para un vestido yo te quiero regalar
Hey, country woman, I want to give you a dress
Yo te dije está cumplio
I told you it's fulfilled
No me tienes que dar ná subiste al caballo
You don't have to give me anything, you mounted the horse
Te fuiste de mí y nunca otra noche mas bella de Mayo han vuelto a vivir
You went away from me, and never another night as beautiful as May has been lived
Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Spirit Music Group, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Written by: JUAN CRUZ RUEDA, DP, Juan Cruz Rueda
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
Emmanuel Andrade Pimentel Galvez
¡Extraordinaria voz la de esta gran cantante Portuguesa Amalia Rodrigues, somos todos ibéricos hijos de la misma madre tierra la península Ibérica! Saudos dende Galicia!
jose antonio conde corrales
Pronunciación cantando en español perfecta. Espectacular !!!
torremayorense
Para mí, Amália Rodrigues es la voz más extraordinaria que he conocido. Los que no la conozcáis, mirad y escuchad sus videos. Quedaréis impactados.
Iván Barcia
Coincido
Pecos V
Coincido totalmente con su opinión, lástima que no hay muchos videos de Amalia, una de las mejores cantantes del siglo XX.-
Ricardo Chaplin
Que voz,es un deleite escucharla
ricardo carvalho
Olé! Grandiosa Amália.
GUILLERMO ALDUNATE
A Fernando Schweitzer, el cambio de f a h al inicio de las palabras no es una herencia del árabe, sino del vasco, que tendía a eliminar la f (y no cambiarla por h, lo que fue después). Esta modificación se puede observar en el castellano así como en el gascón (dialecto del occitano muy influido por el vasco); en ambos se encuentra la sustitución de la "f" inicial por "h" en a sintaxis moderna.
Héctor Blas Trillo
Maravillosa
Maria Helena Reis Pereira
Simplesmente divina...💕