Amalia Rodrigues’s Amalia at the Olympia

The voice of Amalia Rodrigues, the Queen of Fado and Portugal’s most celebrated diva, was extraordinary for its interpretive power, soul wrenching timbre, and international reach. Amalia at the Olympia (1957), a recording of her concert at the fabled Olympia Theater in Paris in 1956, an album issued for multiple markets, from France to Japan, catapulted her into the international limelight. This book unpacks this iconic album and the voice, sound, style, and celebrity of Amalia Rodrigues. In so doing, it examines processes which shaped the internationalization of local popular musics and the making of musical stardom in the 20th century.