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Bidu Sayão

The best brazilian singer of all times

With her limpid and delicate voice, Brazilian soprano Bidu Sayão was one of New York's Metropolitan Opera most respected artists ever. Proof of her prestige there is the enormous picture in her honor displayed in the lobby. Throughout her career, she befriended and worked with some of the 20th Century's top personalities in the world of music, such as conductor Arturo Toscanini, one of his great admirers - he used to call her "la piccola brasiliana" -, Maria Callas, pianist Guiomar Novaes and Carmem Miranda.

She was also the favorite singer of Villa-Lobos, with whom she had an artistic partnership of 38 years. During this time, she immortalized the Bachiana nr. 5, one of the Bachianas Brasileiras, the best known
and most loved of the composer's pieces - and the best known and most loved Brazilian classical composition. Bidu Sayão's recording of the Bachiana nr. 5, which Villa-Lobos considered the most perfect recording of it, gave her the Hall of Fame Award, given by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, and was the most sold album for two years in a row in the United States.

Bidu Sayão started her musical studies in Rio de Janeiro and, at the age of 18, made her debut at the city's Municipal Theater. Her international career began in Romania. She perfected her singing in Nice, France, with Jean de Reszke, the most famous teacher of his time, acquiring the perfect technique and the gentleness that characterized her voice. While in Rome, where opera singing was born, she was surprised with an invitation to open the season of the Teatro Constanzi. Her interpretation of Rosina in Rossini's The Barber of Seville was so admirable that she was included right away among Europe's great lyrical interpreters. In 1925, back in Brazil, she sang once again The Barber of Seville, before opening yet another season of the Teatro Constanzi. In the following years she perfomed in some of the Old World's most important opera houses, such as the "Teatro Nacional São Carlos", in Portugal, Paris' Opera Comique and Milano's Alla Scala.

An excellent actress, thanks to her strength Bidu Sayão lived, throughout her career 22 different heroins, among which Ceci (Il Guarani, Carlos Gomes), Gilda (Rigoletto, Verdi), Mimi (La Bohéme, Puccini), Suzana (The Marriage of Figaro, Mozart) and Violeta (La Traviatta, Verdi).

It was in 1936 that the Brazilian soprano made her grand debut for a United States audience, singing Debussy's La Demoiselle Élue, in a performance conducted by Toscanini at the Carnegie Hall, in New York. In 1937 she performed for the first time in New York's Metropolitan Opera House (where she ended up being a major singer for more than fifteen years), singing the title role of Jules Massenet's opera Manon. At that time she had so many invitations to perform that she interpreted twelve different roles in just thirteen seasons! In February, 1938, she sang for the Roosevelts in the White House. In the occasion, the president offered her the US citizenship, which she declined - Bidu Sayão always wanted to end her career and her life as a Brazilian.

Enchanted with her, Americans would not let her leave though. She continued to perform throughout the country with such success she became known in the United States as "The Charming Singer". In August, 1955, she reached one of the greatest moments of her career, singing at the Hollywood Bowl. With the Calgary Symphony Orchestra, she was called "Glamorous Soprano Star".

Although residing in the US, the 'Brazilian Nightingale' - nickname given by writer Mário de Andrade - performed several times in theaters in Brazil. She was in Rio de Janeiro in 1926, 1933, 1935 and 1936, and in São Paulo in 1926, 1933, 1935, 1936, 1937, 1939, 1940 and 1946. In those seasons she sang The Barber of Seville, Rigoletto, Matrimonio Segreto, Soror Maddalena, Il Guarani, Manon, Romeo and Juliet, I Puritani, La Traviatta, La Bohéme and Lakmé.

In 1957 Bidu Sayão decided to retire. With the same La Demoiselle Élue she performed in the United States for the first time she closed her career in 1958, showing her voice still in perfect shape and receiving the due honors and the best reviews. In 1959, more than one year after closing her career onstage, asked by the composer himself, she recorded Villa-Lobos' The Amazon Forest. With this recording Bidu Sayão closed her career for good, calling this last work her 'swan song'.

In 1995 she came to Rio de Janeiro to be honored by the theme song of the Beija-Flor Samba School. Before leaving for the US, she reaffirmed her desire to return to Brazil. Bidu Sayão died in 1999 at the age of 96, in the State of Maine, where she lived most of the time while in the United States. She wanted to visit Brazil for a last time - she longed to see Guanabara Bay before dying and planned that trip for the celebration of her centennial. After a life full of glory and triumphs, however, the singer could not fulfill this last dream.

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