AUDIO FULLY RECOVERED, RESTORED AND REMASTERD IN HIGH DEFINITION!!! Rodrigues started singing around 1935. Her first professional engagement in a fado venue took place in 1939, and she was a guest in stage revues. Around that time she met Frederico Valerio, a classically trained composer who recognised Amalia's potential and composed numerous melodies especially designed for her- adding orchestral accompaniments. By the early 1940s, Am?lia had become a famous singer in Portugal. She gained popularity in Spain and Brazil (where, in 1945, she made her first recordings on Brazilian label Continental) where she spent some time and Paris (1949) where she resided. In 1950, while performing at the Marshall Plan international benefit shows, she introduced the song 'April in Portugal' to international audiences, under its original title "Coimbra". In the early 1950s, the involvement of Portuguese poet David Mourao-Ferreira marked a new phase in her career where leading poets were writing specifically for her. In the 1970s, Rodrigues concentrated on live concert performances. During the post-25 April 1974 period, she was falsely accused of being a covert agent of the PIDE; this unjust charge triggered a severe bout of depression on her part. While Salazar had been Prime Minister, Rodrigues had been a financial supporter of the Portuguese Communist Party. At the same time she had occasionally expressed some admiration for Salazar himself, reportedly writing love letters to Salazar when he was hospitalized in 1968. Despite the government's heavy promotion of Rodrigues as a national symbol of Portugal, in private, Salazar hated Fado and Rodrigues (whom he referred to as "that creature"), considering its central concept of 'saudade' (nostalgia or a painful yearning for the past) as anti-modern and "has a softening influence on the Portuguese character", one that "sapped all energy from the soul and led to inertia".
