April in Portugal

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

April in Portugal or Avril au Portugal is after A garota de Ipanema ( The Girl from Ipanema by Tom Jobim ) the Portuguese-language song most recorded in the world .

History of origin

The song was written as Coimbra by Raul Ferrão (music) and José Galhardo (text) at the end of the 1930s and originally described the student traditions and student recruitment in Coimbra and at the University of Coimbra , one of the oldest in Europe, in a rather cheerful and romantic way . It also alludes to the tragic love story of Inês de Castro and King Pedro I in 1355 in Coimbra, the then capital of the young Kingdom of Portugal .

Raul Ferrão and José Galhardo successfully wrote songs for Lisbon's theater revues of the 1930s and 1940s. However, Coimbra was initially rejected by the producers. The piece finally made it into the film Capas Negras by Armando Miranda in 1946 as a student “serenata” . In 1947 it was the most successful work in Portuguese film to date (22 weeks). The two main actors were Amália Rodrigues and the tenor Alberto Ribeiro, who sang the song of his beloved in the film and caused outrage among the students in Coimbra because they did not see their traditions, especially Fado de Coimbra , correctly represented by him. The song first received attention here, but still on a modest scale. But Amália Rodrigues liked the song very much and adopted it as a singer in her repertoire.

Impact history

In 1950, Amália went on tour as part of the Marshall Plan's cultural program , in which an artist from each country took part. The then famous French singer Yvette Giraud was also on tour under the Marshall Plan and asked Amália at a meeting in Dublin for some of her favorite songs that could be translated into French. So Coimbra became Avril au Portugal , retexted by Jacques Larue and with an orchestral arrangement by Marc Herrand , Yvette Giraud's husband. She immediately added it to her repertoire and the song became particularly popular in Paris and London, among musicians and audiences alike. In the UK the song was set to music as The girls from Nazare and in the US as The whisp'ring serenade . In German-speaking countries it came out as The first kiss is good , played by the Gellner Quartet (Austroton 55132).

The repressive Portuguese Estado Novo regime took advantage of the resulting translated into French song and commissioned the English film crew directed by Jose Ferrer , which in Portugal just suicide mission ( "The cockleshell heroes") turned, with the production of a documentary called April in Portugal , in the Amália Rodrigues sang the song of the same name. The leading actor from the suicide mission , Trevor Howard , was also the spokesman for April in Portugal .

The film premiered at the Royal Film Performance in London in 1955 and was a great success, including film awards at the Berlinale and Mar del Plata film festival .

Amália Rodrigues has repeatedly recorded Coimbra in different versions and in different languages ​​throughout her career.

Always on the lookout for popular songs, many other singers and musicians around the world recorded their own interpretations of the song. Musicians such as Vic Damone , Oscar Alemán or Liberace recorded it as early as 1953 , but also Louis Armstrong , who recorded April 21, 1953 in New York in Portugal , for his album Satchmo Serenades , on which he featured many of the trendy romantic melodies of the time recorded, for example C'est si bon, It takes two or La vie en rose . The English text (written by the Irish songwriter Jimmy Kennedy as early as 1947) Armstrong added his own words "... and Portugal too!" In his inimitable humorous way after the last line "... but still my heart says I love you".

The Beatles discoverer and first German author of a US No. 1 hit, Bert Kaempfert , recorded an entire album entitled April in Portugal in March 1959 , his first of over 30 for Decca . In addition to Coimbra / April in Portugal, he has turned a whole range of other Portuguese melodies into his easy listening instrumental versions. In Germany, other dance orchestras made the song known to the broader German public until well into the 1970s: Will Glahé , Werner Müller , James Last , Helmut Zacharias and Heinrich Riethmüller were the most famous performers in Germany.

How large the spectrum of singers and groups was who played the song is shown by the large number of artists from different countries: Georges Moustaki , Xavier Cugat , Roger Williams , Edmundo Ros , Mantovani , Enoch Light , Roberto Carlos , Frankie Carle , Chet Atkins , Billy May , André van Duin , Bob Benny , Marcel Dadi , Pérez Prado , Olavi Virta , Lawrence Welk , Eddy Christiani , Percy Faith , Norman Luboff , Vic Damone , Eddie Calvert , the world famous pianist Liberace , Jane Morgan , Ray Conniff , Oscar Alemán .

Many more recordings followed, from Latin American rhythms and swing to beat, surf and alternative rock to interpretations by steel drums and even carillon glockenspiel.

And on November 11, 2002, the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace webpage reported that “over 1000 admirers of the piano legend Roger Williams enjoyed his sophisticated playing when he set his own world record at 11:30 p.m. that Sunday at 13 hours and 5 minutes broke. ”Between his medleys he kept telling anecdotes about the fondness of the scandalous president Nixon for piano sounds and his wife's constant wish to hear April in Portugal .

distribution

More than 200 recordings of the song are known, including by the following artists:

You could also hear it from a wide variety of Fado singers, from student choirs and Fado de Coimbra groups, but also from the bronze bells of the Palácio Nacional de Mafra and at punk and hip-hop concerts.

literature

  • Joaquim Vieira: Photobiografias Século XX - Amália Rodrigues. Temas & Debates, 2008, ISBN 978-989-644-032-9 .
  • Coimbra - April in Portugal - Avril au Portugal. CD + book, Tradisom 2004.
  • Salwa Castelo-Branco: Enciclopédia da música em Portugal no século XX, PZ. Temas & Debates, 2010, ISBN 978-989-644-114-2 .
  • A. Murtinheira, I. Metzeltin: History of Portuguese cinema. Preasens Verlag, 2010, ISBN 978-3-7069-0590-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Record recording: La Voix de son Maître SG 202 from January 11, 1950, published in Germany on Electrola EG 7797
  2. ↑ Mention and records shown in the documentary Um Legado Português , double DVD Fado: Um Legado Português , ZON Multimédia 2013
  3. ^ Coimbra ( Memento of February 13, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ^ Book for CD Coimbra / April in Portugal / Avril au Portugal , Tradisom, Vila Verde 2004