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Amália Enchants Macau

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In June 1990, legendary Fado diva Amália Rodrigues visited Macau as part of the celebrations for that year’s National Day of Portugal, Camões and the Portuguese Communities – the last to be celebrated under Carlos Melancia’s governance. The renowned singer was the headline attraction of a packed program of Portuguese talent. Already 70 at the time of her visit, Amália liked to wake up late, remembers Carlos Marreiros, who was president of the Cultural Institute of Macau at the time of her visit. She had come to Macau accompanied by her secretary and longtime companion, Estrela Carvas, and by her friend and painter Maria de Lourdes Ribeiro born in Goa, where the Fado singer had performed before flying to the territory. Like them, many important figures of Portuguese culture passed through Macau in the last years of the administration. “In the 1990s, Macau had the best June 10th in the entire Portuguese-speaking world. People wanted to make good shows that would dignify Macau, so we brought the greatest figures of Portuguese music and culture.” But that summer of 1990, despite the fame of the Fado diva, Carlos Marreiros was not one of Amália’s greatest admirers. “Our generation … we liked her and that was it, she didn’t move our hearts too much. Until, she came to Macau, then I fell in love with her,” admits Marreiros. “This is true, I even apologized to my wife. During that week I went crazy for her. In addition to being a captivating person, she was highly intelligent.”

 

SIMPLE AND IRRESISTIBLE 

Amália was born into a simple home in 1920, in a popular neighborhood in Lisbon, and always maintained a certain spontaneity in the way she approached her life and a career that led her from poverty to global fame. July 23, 2020 marked the 100th anniversary of her birth, and this year, the day was marked with a wide range of tributes in Portugal, from a mass at the National Pantheon, to a concert with Camané and Mário Laginha at the Fado Museum. Carlos Marreiros attests to the artist’s modesty. He speaks of someone “who despite being very famous, did not act like a star, but instead was a person of great sensitivity and extremely insecure.” Marreiros showed her the city, took her to taste Macanese food and showed her “places where normally the celebrated people of Portugal would not go”. His passion for Amália remains to this day and leads the architect to some lyrical exaggerations. “She had a smile bigger than the Great Wall of China, it was a huge smile and it made me fall in love with her. I wrote two poems for her and chose the best poem, a poem of love, almost adolescent and naive. I took it to her, she read it, folded the sheet in four and put it against her chest. I was very moved, and almost cried. Then she said some very kind words, something like: ‘I thought you were a talented architect and painter, but you have other talents after all’. I must still have a copy of the poem somewhere, but I don’t know where. I gave her the original. ”

 

DRIVING AMÁLIA

Macau certainly put on its best face to receive the empress of Fado, as well as a whole entourage of other important names. Amália’s days were filled with social and artistic commitments. And if Carlos Marreiros was the person to guide her on her walks, Filipino Reynaldo Gutang was the man behind the wheel, driving her from place to place. Having arrived in Macau in 1988, Rey tenderly recalls his encounter with the Fado singer. “The Macau government hired a car and I was the driver, she wanted someone who spoke English. We had a very good relationship. I took her shopping, and we visited several places. She didn’t treat me like a driver, she treated me like a son. She trusted me, left her suitcase with me and always gave me some money at the end of the day.” Three decades later, and still living in Macau, Rey, also a guitarist and music lover, remembers that Amália “sang so well”. “I was very proud to be her driver. Every time I speak to some Portuguese or Macanese and tell them that I was the driver for Amália Rodrigues, they are very impressed. She was very famous. ”

 

MEETING THE PRESS

Amália received many requests for interviews from the local press. The artist had recently celebrated 50 years of her singing career, and arrived covered with decorations and awards from different governments and institutions. On June 10, Amália was awarded the Macau Medal of Valor by Governor Carlos Melancia and participated in a pilgrimage to the Camões Grotto, where she later confessed to having cried. The next day was a great solo performance in the university auditorium, a show that can now be seen online. The broadcast of the show was produced by Luís Nestor Ribeiro of TDM. After a short rehearsal held the day before, Amália received Ribeiro’s team members in the dressing room “with great openness and simplicity”. “At the age of 70, it was natural for her to show some tiredness, due to her long tour of Asia. However, she wanted to know what marking we had assigned to her on stage, what the most favorable camera In the end, when Coutinho thanked Amália, he was surprised: “As we said our farewells, the great Fado diva, 70 years old, pulled me to her and told me in my ear … what I do not even confess to the walls. It was nothing unseemly at all. They were just words of great sympathy and kindness; a gesture that only the great ones are capable of.” Amália would not perform in Macau again. She passed away on October 6, 1999, shortly before Macau’s handover. In a conversation with Portuguese author Adelino Vaz, Amália Rodrigues defined her place in Fado and the place of Fado in her life: “I am the strong dish of Fado because I have everything that Fado wants to be sung. I am sad, I am disenchanted, I am alone, I am detached. I have nothing, nothing, no reason to live. Now, this is what Fado wants, because I have it all inside me.” 

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Many years before coming to Macau, Amália Rodrigues had already come across Macau in her artistic career. As a singer and also as an actress. In 1965, Amália played the role of herself in a film in which arms dealers threaten to launch discord at an international conference in Portugal, until a French diplomat solves the problem on a risky trip to Macau. Where else? The film had several experimental titles, but ended up being called Via Macao. It was a Franco-Portuguese co-production, directed by Jean Leduc, and featuring Roger Hanin, Françoise Prévost and Anna Gaël. Amália’s participation in the film was short, but memorable. She sang ‘Le premier jour du monde’, with music by Jacques Datin and lyrics by Maurice Vidalin, which featured as the main theme on the film’s soundtrack.

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