Genre
Fado. A landmark in the creative collaboration between Amália Rodrigues and composer Alain Oulman, the album sets eight poems by major Portuguese writers - José Régio, Luís de Camões, David Mourão-Ferreira, Alexandre O'Neill, and Pedro Homem de Melo, among others - to music composed by Oulman, alongside four songs in the traditional fado style and two Spanish songs.
Release
Released in June 1965 by Columbia / Valentim de Carvalho, Portugal. The album reached number one on the AFP chart in Portugal and number two on the SNEP chart in France.In 2015, on the 50th anniversary of its release, a two-disc edition was released including the twelve original songs and previously unreleased versions from the original sessions.
Production
The album was recorded at the Valentim de Carvalho studios, Paço de Arcos. Amália was accompanied by Domingos Camarinha on Portuguese guitar and Castro Mota and Martinho d'Assunção on viola. The Discogs matrix data confirms the sessions took place in 1964, with the album released the following year. The cover photograph was by Augusto Cabrita.
Reception
The album is universally regarded as one of the summits of Amália's recorded legacy and one of the great recordings in the history of fado. Critics have singled out "Fado Português" and "Gaivota" as the two masterpieces of the album. The album's extraordinary commercial success in France established Amália's reputation in Europe's most demanding cultural market.
Amália Rodrigues
Amália da Piedade Rodrigues (July 23, 1920, Fundão – October 6, 1999, Lisbon) is universally regarded as the greatest fadista of the twentieth century and the artist most responsible for transforming fado from a marginalised urban genre into an internationally recognised art form. Born into poverty in the Fundão, she grew up in Alcântara, Lisbon, and began singing professionally at the age of nineteen. Her collaboration with Alain Oulman - who set the texts of the greatest Portuguese poets to music for her from 1962 onward - is considered the defining artistic relationship of her career. She performed at Carnegie Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, the Olympia, and the world's foremost theatres. She was honoured with the Légion d'honneur by France, the Ordem da Liberdade by Portugal, and in 2013 fado was inscribed on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list — a recognition that owes much to her legacy.
This text was generated with the assistance of Artificial Intelligence.
