Search - Amalia Rodrigues :: At the Olympia Theatre

Prime Amália

Greg Kline | Champaign, IL | 11/27/2009

(4 out of 5 stars)

"In Paris in 1956, and at the famous venue where I saw Sonny Rollins a few years ago, by the by. I wish I had seen this. Then again, I might have immediately walked out and jumped into the Siene figuring that nothing was ever going to be better, thus missing Sonny Rollins, so what the heck.



Listening to her shift gears with her voice the way she does on Fado Corrido (or La Vai Lisboa, for that matter) would surely have caused me to swoon. The version of Barco Negro here has had the tune cycling through my head, waking and in dreams, since I first listened to it the other morning. That is powerful singing. Wonderous version of Coimbra, too. Again, it is as she should be heard, with only Portuguese guitar (Domingos Camarinha) and classical, or Spanish, guitar alongside. Amália, the song, Fado Amália as she introduces it, made my heart ache before I ever knew just what it was she was singing. And that is powerful singing."