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.
Que Fazes Aí Lisboa
Amália Rodrigues Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
De olhos fincados no rio?
Os olhos não se levantam
Para prender um navio? Que fazes aí, Lisboa
De olhos fincados no rio?
O barco que ontem partiu
Partiu e não volta mais!
Em cada esquina do cais!
O barco que ontem partiu
Partiu e não volta mais!
Lisboa, velha Lisboa
Mãe pobre à beira do rio!
Seja o xaile dos meus ombros
Agasalho do teu frio! Lisboa, velha Lisboa
Mãe pobre à beira do rio!
These lyrics are from the song "Que Fazes Aí Lisboa" by Amália Rodrigues, a renowned Portuguese fado singer. The song reflects on the city of Lisbon, addressing it directly as if it were a person. The lyrics ask what Lisbon is doing with its eyes fixed on the river and why it does not look up to catch a glimpse of a returning ship. The repetition of this question emphasizes the longing and absence felt in the city.
The next stanza mentions a boat that departed yesterday and will never return. It mourns the loss by stating that it sheds tears of stone at every corner of the dock. This image suggests the immovable pain caused by the departure of a loved one or a sense of perpetual longing. The repetition of the line "Partiu e não volta mais" (Departed and will never return) further emphasizes the irreversibility of this loss.
The song continues to describe Lisbon as an old and poor mother by the river, with the singer offering her shawl as warmth against the city's cold. This metaphorical image symbolizes the singer's affection and desire to comfort and protect the city, relating to the deep emotional connection many individuals have with their hometowns.
Overall, "Que Fazes Aí Lisboa" portrays a sense of longing, loss, and empathy towards the city of Lisbon, capturing the essence of fado music, which often expresses melancholy and nostalgia for what once was.
Line by Line Meaning
Que fazes aí, Lisboa
Why do you stand there, Lisbon
De olhos fincados no rio?
With fixed eyes on the river?
Os olhos não se levantam
Eyes do not look up
Para prender um navio?
To catch a ship?
Que fazes aí, Lisboa
Why do you stand there, Lisbon
De olhos fincados no rio?
With fixed eyes on the river?
O barco que ontem partiu
The boat that left yesterday
Partiu e não volta mais!
Departed and will not return!
Chora lágrimas de pedra
Cry tears of stone
Em cada esquina do cais!
On every corner of the dock!
O barco que ontem partiu
The boat that left yesterday
Partiu e não volta mais!
Departed and will not return!
Lisboa, velha Lisboa
Lisbon, old Lisbon
Mãe pobre à beira do rio!
Poor mother by the riverside!
Seja o xaile dos meus ombros
Let me be the shawl for my shoulders
Agasalho do teu frio!
Warmth for your cold!
Lisboa, velha Lisboa
Lisbon, old Lisbon
Mãe pobre à beira do rio!
Poor mother by the riverside!
Lyrics © O/B/O APRA AMCOS
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
Melissa Cruz
O Amália minha enterna saudade da nossa Rainha voz do coração do povo Português ❤️
Emilie von Bauer
Canção apreciável. Abraço fraterno do Brasil!
Alicia Diaz
Acho que a mãe pobre a beira do rio é Lisboa..Portugal pequenino ainda doce aos pequeninos..
LISBOA..a minha lindinha., AMÁLIA 🌻❤️🇵🇹 Agasalho do coração de Lisboa..que sente eterna saudade.. fazê-nos falta AMÁLIA 🌻❤️🇵🇹
Daniel Bento
Mais um lindo fado que descobri agora, da nossa eterna diva ❤️
Giancarlo Belloni
Emozionante Amalia Diva Eterna ❤❤❤
Isaac Chalmain
😍💕 THE BEST AMALIA!!! 🙌
J. Gabriel
Foi ontem. passaram-se 20 anos de Saudade.
Alicia Diaz
Eterna saudade...
Felix R
La reina del fado
Artur Rodrigues
AMEN AMEN DIOS la bendiga siempre