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.
Saudades do Brasil em Portugal
Amália Rodrigues Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Que existe entre nós dois pra
Nos unir e separar pudesse eu te dizer a dor
Que dói dentro de mim
Que mói meu coração nesta paixão
Que não tem fim
Ausência tão cruel, saudade tão fatal!
Saudades do Brasil em Portugal!
Meu bem, sempre que ouvires um lamento
Crescer, desolador, na voz do vento
Sou eu em solidão pensando em ti
Chorando todo o tempo que perdi!
Sou eu em solidão pensando em ti
Chorando todo o tempo que perdi!
The lyrics of Saudades do Brasil em Portugal depict the deep longing and sadness of two lovers separated by the sea, specifically between Brazil and Portugal. The opening line "O sal das minhas lágrimas de amor criou o mar" (The salt of my love tears created the sea) sets the tone for the rest of the song, emphasizing the emotional pain that has resulted in the distance between them. The sea serves as both a physical barrier and a metaphor for the emotional divide between the two.
The singer expresses their desire to communicate the pain that they feel inside, but cannot find the words to do so. The phrase "Que dói dentro de mim que mói meu coração nesta paixão que não tem fim" (That hurts inside of me and grinds my heart in this endless passion) highlights the intensity of their feelings and the impossibility of escaping them. The sadness and longing build throughout the song and culminate in the refrain, "Saudades do Brasil em Portugal," which can be translated as "Missing Brazil in Portugal." This line encapsulates the bittersweet feeling of being torn between two places and two loves.
Overall, Saudades do Brasil em Portugal is a poignant and somber expression of the pain of separation and the longing for connection.
Line by Line Meaning
O sal das minhas lágrimas de amor criou o mar
My tears of love turned into the salt that created the sea between us.
Que existe entre nós dois pra
That exists between us
Nos unir e separar pudesse eu te dizer a dor
Connecting and separating us. If only I could express the pain,
Que dói dentro de mim
That hurts inside of me
Que mói meu coração nesta paixão
That grinds my heart in this endless passion
Que não tem fim
That has no end
Ausência tão cruel, saudade tão fatal!
Such cruel absence, such fatal longing!
Saudades do Brasil em Portugal!
Longing for Brazil in Portugal!
Meu bem, sempre que ouvires um lamento
My dear, whenever you hear a cry
Crescer, desolador, na voz do vento
Growing desolately in the sound of the wind
Sou eu em solidão pensando em ti
That's me, alone, thinking of you
Chorando todo o tempo que perdi!
Crying over all the lost time!
Sou eu em solidão pensando em ti
That's me, alone, thinking of you
Chorando todo o tempo que perdi!
Crying over all the lost time!
Lyrics © O/B/O APRA AMCOS
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
Luís Alves
Saudades do Brasil em Portugal
Vinicius de Moraes
O sal das minhas lágrimas de amor criou o mar
Que existe entre nós dois para nos unir e separar
Pudesse eu te dizer
A dor que dói dentro de mim
Que mói meu coração nesta paixão
Que não tem fim
Ausência tão cruel
Saudade tão fatal
Saudades do Brasil em Portugal
Meu bem, sempre que ouvires um lamento
Crescer desolador na voz do vento
Sou eu em solidão pensando em ti
Chorando todo o tempo que perdi
Luís Alves
Saudades do Brasil em Portugal
Vinicius de Moraes
O sal das minhas lágrimas de amor criou o mar
Que existe entre nós dois para nos unir e separar
Pudesse eu te dizer
A dor que dói dentro de mim
Que mói meu coração nesta paixão
Que não tem fim
Ausência tão cruel
Saudade tão fatal
Saudades do Brasil em Portugal
Meu bem, sempre que ouvires um lamento
Crescer desolador na voz do vento
Sou eu em solidão pensando em ti
Chorando todo o tempo que perdi
Fatima gonçalo
PERDI MEU PAI PORTUGUES..SO CHORO AO OUVIR ESSA VOZ QUE OUVI A INFANCIA TODA..MARAVILHOSA!
Jackob armstrong
Lindas canções, nostalgia de um Tempo não vivenciado.
Adalberto Queiroz
Que m'ravilha!! Oh, paixão que não tem fim!! EU te amo, Amália... Um Queiroz no Brasil, chorando todo tempo que perdi, não te ouvindo, amada NOSSA de Brasil e Portugal
Bruno Albuquerque
Credo, Amália, tanto tempo depois e ainda me arrepias de prazer ao ouvir a tua voz! por muitos, muitos anos que se passem, chorarei sempre a saudade que sinto de ti (e de todos aqueles que me partiram: meu pai, meus avós maternos, alguns amigos [onde incluo os "meus artistas", que são os meus amigos nas horas frias)] e aguardo ansiosamente a hora em que me juntarei a todos vocês uma vez mais!! Amália! Amália! O presente de Deus a Portugal e ao Mundo!
leandro pedrosa joaquim
Bruno Albuquerque foi com certeza um presente do criador para omundo
Louise D' Amaral
♡♡♡♡ amo as músicas portuguesas
Dolores75ify
louise D.Amaral vai ter que vir a Portugal, e ouvir cantar o fado .
Octtavius
Amália, para sempre. Sem igual.
Paulo Nogueira
Meu coração geme com esta canção, Vinicius deu alma e Amália a voz.