Celeste Rodrigues: the fado singer who sang for 73 years

In 1945 Celeste Rodrigues was 22 and had never meant to sing in public. On the night of her debut at the Casablanca, a theatre in Lisbon's Parque Mayer, someone had to give her a push to get her onto the stage. The house was full, and her elder sister Amália, the country's best-paid fado singer since 1940, was her madrinha, or sponsor, for the night.4 sources4 sources

It had started by accident. The Rodrigues sisters were regulars at the Adega Mesquita, a tavern in the Bairro Alto where fado was sung over Saturday lunch. One day Celeste overcame her shyness and joined a desgarrada, a sung exchange of improvised verses, and “sang a quatrain”. In the room was José Miguel, Amália's impresario, who owned the Casablanca and several fado houses. He hired her and insisted she turn professional.3 sources3 sources

She went on singing for 73 years. When she gave her last Lisbon concert, at the Teatro Tivoli in May 2018, she was 95 and the longest-serving fado singer still at work.3 sources3 sources

Maria Celeste Rebordão Rodrigues was born on 14 March 1923 in Fundão, a town in Beira Baixa, a poor inland province. One DN obituary places the birth in Alpedrinha, a village in the same municipality. Portugal was then a republic, proclaimed in 1910, whose governments rose and fell until a military coup ended the regime in 1926.3 sources3 sources

Her father was a shoemaker who played the cornet, the saxophone and the trumpet. Her mother sang the folk songs of the Beira and never got used to leaving it. There were ten children, five boys and five girls, and the parents saw five of them die. Amália was the eldest girl. By 2018 Celeste was the last of the ten still alive.2 sources2 sources

Amália, born in Lisbon in 1920, had been left there with her grandparents when her parents went back to Fundão. When Celeste was five, the rest of the family came to the capital, first to Campolide, where the father had a contract with a local recreational society, and then to Alcântara, the docks district in the west of the city. Amália's foundation gives a later date, 1934, for the parents' return and for Amália moving in with them. Either way, the sisters met almost as strangers.4 sources4 sources

From then on they were rarely apart. Celeste went to the primary school at the Tapada and remembered herself as a tomboy, mischievous but shy. She started work at nine, against her parents' wishes, in a cannery in Alcântara and then in a cake factory in Santos. With her mother she sold fruit sent from Fundão at the Ribeira market, and with Amália she worked at a stall selling regional crafts on the Rocha Conde de Óbidos quay, a job she got because she spoke some English, learned from a friend of her father's. Like her sister, she had only primary schooling.4 sources4 sources

Music was always in the house. “It was my mother who woke our interest in singing,” she said, and her father, grandfather and great-grandfather were all musicians. She was seven or eight when she first heard fado, from blind street singers with an accordion or a guitar, and on gramophones.1 source1 source

Two months after her debut she joined a theatre company bound for Brazil, where Amália was the star. They played the operetta Rosa Cantadeira and a revue, and in Rio de Janeiro she sang with Amália at the Urca casino. The tour lasted about a year. All her life Celeste was offered parts in plays and turned them down.3 sources3 sources

Back in Lisbon she joined the casts of the Café Latino, the Marialvas and the Urca at the Feira Popular, the city's fun fair. She moved from the Café Luso to the Adega Mesquita, where she stayed four years, and then sang at the Tipóia and the Adega Machado. In the early 1950s she went back to Brazil to sing on radio and television and at Fado, a restaurant run by the Portuguese singer Tony de Matos.2 sources2 sources

In 1953, at 30, she married the actor Varela Silva, after an engagement to the horseman bullfighter José Casimiro had broken off. (One DN obituary puts her age at the wedding at 32.) They had two daughters. In January 1957 she and her husband took over A Viela, a fado restaurant where poets, intellectuals and singers sat late into the night. She gave it up four years later, admitting she had no “knack for business”.4 sources4 sources

Portuguese television arrived in the same years. RTP ran trial broadcasts from a studio at the Feira Popular from 4 September 1956 and began regular broadcasting from its studios in Lumiar on 7 March 1957. Celeste told the magazine Álbum da Canção in 1967 that she was among the first to sing in the Feira Popular trials, and the first to face the cameras when Lumiar moved from experiments to regular programmes.3 sources3 sources

In the 1950s she also recorded “Olha a Mala”, a song by Manuel Casimiro that sold for more than a decade and became the biggest seller of her career. “I stopped being Amália's sister,” she said. Her repertoire grew to include “A Lenda das Algas”, “Saudade Vai-te Embora”, “O Meu Xaile”, with words by her husband, and “Fado das Queixas”. The Museu do Fado counts almost 60 records; Diário de Notícias says more than 60.4 sources4 sources

She was also travelling. A 1956 interview with the newspaper A Voz de Portugal listed Brazil, Spain, the Belgian Congo, British colonies in Africa, Angola, Mozambique and the Portuguese islands. The Museu do Fado says she was invited to record for the BBC programme Panorama in London, at the broadcaster Richard Dimbleby's invitation, and for The Ed Sullivan Show on the American network CBS. No other source we found records either appearance.3 sources3 sources

In the early 1960s she joined the cast of the Parreirinha de Alfama, the house of another veteran singer, Argentina Santos. She stayed more than ten years. Then João Ferreira-Rosa invited her to join the cast of the Taverna do Embuçado. The Museu do Fado says she sang there for 25 years; a DN obituary gives ten.3 sources3 sources

The Carnation Revolution of 25 April 1974, the military coup that ended the dictatorship, was followed by changes in her private life. She spent six months in Canada and divorced Varela Silva after about 20 years of marriage.3 sources3 sources

At some point, the Museu do Fado says, she went to live in Washington, for family reasons, with her daughters and grandchildren, and kept singing in fado houses whenever she could. It gives no dates. Later Lisbon stages included the Bacalhau de Molho and the Casa de Linhares.2 sources2 sources

Amália became a world star with fado shaped as popular song. Celeste stayed with the traditional fado of the Lisbon taverns and neighbourhoods, the fado castiço, and with the songs of the Beira she had learned as a child. The film director Bruno de Almeida, whom Amália introduced to her sister at the end of the 1970s, heard the difference in their temperaments.3 sources3 sources

She was asked about her sister all her life, and her answers hardly changed. In April 2018, weeks before her last Lisbon concert, she told Diário de Notícias that the two were alike in many things but felt differently.1 source1 source

She said she did not understand fado so much as feel it. “For me the poem is very important,” she told Lusa. “And then I hear the trill of the guitars and it happens.” Argentina Santos, who worked beside her for years, said she had “a little music box in her throat”.1 source1 source

Recognition came again when she was past 80. In 2005 the director Ricardo Pais, then head of the Teatro Nacional São João in Porto, cast her in Cabelo Branco é Saudade, a show with three other fado voices: Argentina Santos, Alcindo de Carvalho and Ricardo Ribeiro. It toured Europe.3 sources3 sources

In 2007 the album Fado Celeste, produced by Luís Varatojo and released in the Netherlands, mixed traditional fados with new lyrics by Hélder Moutinho, José Luís Gordo and Tiago Torres da Silva. In 2008 she toured the Netherlands, including the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. Her grandson, the film-maker Diogo Varela Silva, made a documentary about her, Fado Celeste, released in 2010.3 sources3 sources

She took up painting late, at 78 by DN's account and after 80 by the Museu do Fado's, and in July 2017 showed her work in an exhibition called Cores do Fado, at the urging of her friend the Mozambican painter Roberto Chichorro. She slept little, she used to say, because she “didn't want to lose any of life's time”.3 sources3 sources

In mid-December 2017 Madonna, who had moved to Lisbon, heard her at the Mesa de Frades, a fado house in Alfama. The two sang Elvis Presley's “Can't Help Falling in Love” together, and Madonna posted the video on Instagram, calling her a living legend. Celeste, who said she preferred David Bowie, then flew to New York at 94 with her grandson and her great-grandson, the guitarist Gaspar Varela, to sing at Madonna's New Year's Eve party.3 sources3 sources

She treated the attention lightly. “She was nice to like my voice and that was all,” she told DN. Her last two concerts were full: the Town Hall in New York on 7 April 2018, on a fado festival bill with Carlos do Carmo, and the Teatro Tivoli in Lisbon on 11 May, a celebration of 73 years on stage.3 sources3 sources

Celeste Rodrigues died in Lisbon on Wednesday 1 August 2018, aged 95. Her grandson Diogo announced it on Facebook, calling her “the foundation stone of our family”. The Ministry of Culture said she had left her voice tied to “traditional fado, street fado and its roots”. She was buried in the Talhão dos Artistas, the artists' plot of the Prazeres cemetery.3 sources3 sources

Lisbon City Council said that Lisbon had been the city of her life, although she was born in Fundão. Madonna posted a video of her singing “A Noite do Meu Bem” and wrote that she had been lucky to meet, hear and sing with her.2 sources2 sources

On 14 March 2023, the day she would have turned 100, the Museu do Fado opened a centenary exhibition curated by Diogo Varela Silva, with her records, trophies and awards, stage props, press cuttings, paintings and films. A book published with it gave access to two unreleased recordings she made at 95, “Se Alguém me Procurar” and “A Noite do Meu Bem”. Gaspar Varela played Portuguese guitar at the opening.3 sources3 sources

Her 73 years on stage were, as her grandson put it, one of the longest careers in fado. She was among the first fado singers on Portuguese television and, the Museu do Fado says, one of the first to build a real international career, in halls from the Concertgebouw to Carnegie Hall and the Cité de la Musique in Paris.3 sources3 sources

Younger singers knew her well. Bruno de Almeida remembered that she helped young musicians and gave advice, and that she was nicknamed the grandmother of fado. For her 90th birthday in 2013 the Museu do Fado showed a film by Bruno de Almeida in which singers including Camané, Carminho, Ricardo Ribeiro, Aldina Duarte and Gisela João took part.3 sources3 sources

Her family carries on. Diogo Varela Silva has made films about her and curated her centenary exhibition, and Gaspar Varela learned the Portuguese guitar so that he could accompany his great-grandmother on stage.3 sources3 sources