Amália Rodrigues

Who was Amália Rodrigues?

Amália da Piedade Rodrigues, GCSE, GCIH, known as Amália Rodrigues, was a Portuguese singer and actress. She was known as the Rainha do Fado and was most influential in popularizing fado worldwide. She was one of the most important figures in the genre's development, and enjoyed a 50-year recording and stage career. Amália' performances and choice of repertoire pushed fado's boundaries and helped redefine it and reconfigure it for her and subsequent generations. In effect, Amália wrote the rulebook on what fado could be and on how a female fadista—or fado singer—should perform it, to the extent that she remains an unsurpassable model and an unending source of repertoire for all those who came afterwards. Amália enjoyed an extensive international career between the 1950s and the 1970s, although in an era where such efforts were not as easily quantified as today. She was the main inspiration to other well-known international fado and popular music artists such as Madredeus, Dulce Pontes, and Mariza.

Amália Rodrigues remains today as Portugal's most famous artist and singer, a woman who was born into an almost destitute family and who grew to become not only Portugal's major star but also an internationally acclaimed artist and singer, whose career spanned 55 years of activity, recording songs in several languages, versions of her own songs, most famously 'Coimbra', and performing all over the world, achieving tremendous success in countries like France, Italy, Argentina, Spain, the USA, Mexico, Brazil, Romania, Japan and The Netherlands, among many others.