Maysa Matarazzo
Encyclopedia
Maysa Figueira Monjardim (June 6, 1936, São Paulo, Brazil – January 22, 1977, Niterói
, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
) , better known as Maysa Matarazzo or simply Maysa, daughter of Alcibíades Guaraná Monjardim and wife Inah Figueira and paternal granddaughter of Manuel Silvino Monjardim and wife Ursulina Guaraná, was a singer, composer
, and actress from Brazil. She is also associated with Bossa nova
music
but is widely known as a torch song
(fossa) interpreter.
, the 1st Baron
of Monjardim, and wife Laurinda Luísa Pinto Pereira. Maysa showed talent at a young age and by twelve had written a samba
song, which later became a hit from her first album. She married André Matarazzo Filho, a member of a wealthy and traditional São Paulo family in 1954 at the age of 18 and two years later had a son, Jayme Monjardim
. Jayme would later be known as a television director
. In the late 1950s she formed a successful bossa nova group and also did television work relying on her magnificent pair of gorgeous green eyes.
Her tour to Buenos Aires
first projected bossa nova beyond Brazil's borders but was not without controversy. The tour was a great success and extended to Chile
and Uruguay
, but Maysa had an affair with the show's producer, Ronaldo Bôscoli
, a journalist and composer linked romantically to bossa nova's muse Nara Leão
. This led not only to a break between Nara and Ronaldo, but also to a fracture in the bossa nova movement. Nara supported Carlos Lyra
's nationalist vertent of the bossa nova movement, to the detriment of Boscoli's more orthodox approach, emphasizing form rather than content in bossa nova compositions. Nara also began courting older composers of traditional sambas, such as morro composers Zé Kéti and Cartola
. She also became an idol of the protest song genre against the military dictatorship in Brazil. Nara's pocket show "Opinião" marked the start of a series of protest musical shows, which both in Rio and São Paulo distracted the public from the main themes of "the love, the smile and the flower", typical of the bossa nova years. So Maysa became "persona non grata" both to the bossa-novistas and the protest singers and her career faltered. She reacted by marrying Spaniard music producer Miguel Anzana, with whom she moved to Spain
and began a series of presentations not only in Spain, but also Portugal
, Italy
and France
.
Her personal life, already tumultuous, became even more chaotic leading to her being called "the Janis Joplin
of Bossa Nova". But she later made a come back with one of the first notable shows in Rio's "Canecão" venue, the equivalent of Carnegie Hall
in NYC
. Maysa also played the Olympia
in Paris
to a full house twice and enjoyed considerable success in Europe. She is still considered the best Brazilian "torch song" (fossa) musician, rivaled only perhaps by Nora Ney
as interpreter and Dolores Duran
as composer. Upon her return to Brazil, Maysa continued to blend her old unique "broken love affair" trademarks with the more current festival style and occasional bossa nova hits. In the 1970s Maysa tapped her actress side and acted on a few telenovela
s in Brazil. She also composed the soundtrack for a Rede Globo
telenova just as the TV network became the powerhouse of Brazilian soap operas. She appeared more in peace with herself in latter years but died in a car crash in 1977, on the Rio-Niterói bridge
, which connects the cities of Rio de Janeiro and Niterói over the Guanabara Bay.
In January 2009, 32 years after her death, a miniseries about her life was broadcast on Brazilian television and spanned two new books about one of Brazil's most charismatic divas. Maysa's style influenced the following generations of Brazilian female singers and composers, with great ascendancy in the works of Simone
, Cazuza
, Leila Pinheiro, Fafá de Belém
and Ângela Rô Rô
.
Niterói
Niterói is a municipality in the state of Rio de Janeiro, southeast region of Brazil. It has an estimated population of 487,327 inhabitants and an area of ², being the sixth most populous city in the state and the highest Human Development Index. Integrates the Metropolitan Region of Rio de...
, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Rio de Janeiro (state)
Rio de Janeiro is one of the 27 states of Brazil.Rio de Janeiro has the second largest economy of Brazil behind only São Paulo state.The state of Rio de Janeiro is located within the Brazilian geopolitical region classified as the Southeast...
) , better known as Maysa Matarazzo or simply Maysa, daughter of Alcibíades Guaraná Monjardim and wife Inah Figueira and paternal granddaughter of Manuel Silvino Monjardim and wife Ursulina Guaraná, was a singer, composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
, and actress from Brazil. She is also associated with Bossa nova
Bossa nova
Bossa nova is a style of Brazilian music. Bossa nova acquired a large following in the 1960s, initially consisting of young musicians and college students...
music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
but is widely known as a torch song
Torch song
A torch song is a sentimental love song, typically one in which the singer laments an unrequited or lost love, either where one party is oblivious to the existence of the other, where one party has moved on, or where a romantic affair has affected the relationship...
(fossa) interpreter.
Biography
Maysa's grandfather was Alfeu Adolfo Monjardim de Andrade e AlmeidaAlfeu Adolfo Monjardim de Andrade e Almeida
Alfeu Adolfo Monjardim de Andrade e Almeida, 1st and only Baron of Monjardim was the sixth president of the Brazilian state of Espírito Santo, and the first to be elected by the people of the state.-Political career:The Baron of Monjardim...
, the 1st Baron
Baron
Baron is a title of nobility. The word baron comes from Old French baron, itself from Old High German and Latin baro meaning " man, warrior"; it merged with cognate Old English beorn meaning "nobleman"...
of Monjardim, and wife Laurinda Luísa Pinto Pereira. Maysa showed talent at a young age and by twelve had written a samba
Samba
Samba is a Brazilian dance and musical genre originating in Bahia and with its roots in Brazil and Africa via the West African slave trade and African religious traditions. It is recognized around the world as a symbol of Brazil and the Brazilian Carnival...
song, which later became a hit from her first album. She married André Matarazzo Filho, a member of a wealthy and traditional São Paulo family in 1954 at the age of 18 and two years later had a son, Jayme Monjardim
Jayme Monjardim
Jayme Monjardim Matarazzo is a Brazilian TV and film director. He is the only child of André Matarazzo Filho and Maysa Matarazzo....
. Jayme would later be known as a television director
Television director
A television director directs the activities involved in making a television program and is part of a television crew.-Duties:The duties of a television director vary depending on whether the production is live or recorded to video tape or video server .In both types of productions, the...
. In the late 1950s she formed a successful bossa nova group and also did television work relying on her magnificent pair of gorgeous green eyes.
Her tour to Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
first projected bossa nova beyond Brazil's borders but was not without controversy. The tour was a great success and extended to Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
and Uruguay
Uruguay
Uruguay ,officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay,sometimes the Eastern Republic of Uruguay; ) is a country in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area...
, but Maysa had an affair with the show's producer, Ronaldo Bôscoli
Ronaldo Bôscoli
Ronaldo Fernando Esquerdo Bôscoli, usually known as Ronaldo Bôscoli, or just Bôscoli was a Brazilian composer, songwriter, record producer and journalist....
, a journalist and composer linked romantically to bossa nova's muse Nara Leão
Nara Leão
Nara Lofego Leão was a Brazilian bossa nova and MPB singer and occasional actress. Her husband was Carlos Diegues, director and writer of Bye Bye Brasil....
. This led not only to a break between Nara and Ronaldo, but also to a fracture in the bossa nova movement. Nara supported Carlos Lyra
Carlos Lyra
Carlos Lyra is a Brazilian singer and composer of numerous bossa nova and Música Popular Brasileira classics. He was born on May 11, 1939. Along with Roberto Menescal, he was a primary figure of the younger generation of bossa nova musicians who closely followed the inception of the style by João...
's nationalist vertent of the bossa nova movement, to the detriment of Boscoli's more orthodox approach, emphasizing form rather than content in bossa nova compositions. Nara also began courting older composers of traditional sambas, such as morro composers Zé Kéti and Cartola
Cartola
Angenor de Oliveira, known as Cartola , was a Brazilian singer, composer and poet considered to be a major figure in the development of samba.Cartola composed, alone or with partners, more than 500 songs.-Biography:...
. She also became an idol of the protest song genre against the military dictatorship in Brazil. Nara's pocket show "Opinião" marked the start of a series of protest musical shows, which both in Rio and São Paulo distracted the public from the main themes of "the love, the smile and the flower", typical of the bossa nova years. So Maysa became "persona non grata" both to the bossa-novistas and the protest singers and her career faltered. She reacted by marrying Spaniard music producer Miguel Anzana, with whom she moved to Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
and began a series of presentations not only in Spain, but also Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
and France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
.
Her personal life, already tumultuous, became even more chaotic leading to her being called "the Janis Joplin
Janis Joplin
Janis Lyn Joplin was an American singer, songwriter, painter, dancer and music arranger. She rose to prominence in the late 1960s as the lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company and later as a solo artist with her backing groups, The Kozmic Blues Band and The Full Tilt Boogie Band...
of Bossa Nova". But she later made a come back with one of the first notable shows in Rio's "Canecão" venue, the equivalent of Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
in NYC
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. Maysa also played the Olympia
Paris Olympia
The Olympia is a music hall in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. Located at No. 28, Boulevard des Capucines, its closest métro/RER stations are Madeleine, Opéra, Havre – Caumartin and Auber....
in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
to a full house twice and enjoyed considerable success in Europe. She is still considered the best Brazilian "torch song" (fossa) musician, rivaled only perhaps by Nora Ney
Nora Ney
Nora Ney was a Brazilian singer. She is also the most notable interpreter of the samba-canção music style and a pioneer of the Brazilian rock....
as interpreter and Dolores Duran
Dolores Duran
Dolores Duran was a Brazilian singer and composer.Adiléia Silva da Rocha debuted at age 10 on the radio. Two years later, when her father died, she started to work on the television, too...
as composer. Upon her return to Brazil, Maysa continued to blend her old unique "broken love affair" trademarks with the more current festival style and occasional bossa nova hits. In the 1970s Maysa tapped her actress side and acted on a few telenovela
Telenovela
A telenovela is a limited-run serial dramatic programming popular in Latin American, Portuguese, and Spanish television programming. The word combines tele, short for televisión or televisão , and novela, a Spanish or Portuguese word for "novel"...
s in Brazil. She also composed the soundtrack for a Rede Globo
Rede Globo
Rede Globo , or simply Globo, is a Brazilian television network, launched by media mogul Roberto Marinho on April 26, 1965. It is owned by media conglomerate Organizações Globo, being by far the largest of its holdings...
telenova just as the TV network became the powerhouse of Brazilian soap operas. She appeared more in peace with herself in latter years but died in a car crash in 1977, on the Rio-Niterói bridge
Rio-Niterói Bridge
President Costa e Silva Bridge, commonly known as the Rio-Niteroi Bridge, is a box girder bridge located at Guanabara Bay, in the State of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. It connects the cities of Rio de Janeiro and the municipality of Niterói. It is currently the longest prestressed concrete bridge in...
, which connects the cities of Rio de Janeiro and Niterói over the Guanabara Bay.
In January 2009, 32 years after her death, a miniseries about her life was broadcast on Brazilian television and spanned two new books about one of Brazil's most charismatic divas. Maysa's style influenced the following generations of Brazilian female singers and composers, with great ascendancy in the works of Simone
Simone Bittencourt de Oliveira
Simone Bittencourt de Oliveira, better known as Simone, is a Brazilian singer and a major performer of Música Popular Brasileira who has recorded more than 31 albums.-Biography:...
, Cazuza
Cazuza
Agenor Miranda Araújo Neto, better known as Cazuza was a Brazilian composer and singer, born in Rio de Janeiro. Along with Raul Seixas, Renato Russo and Os Mutantes, Cazuza is considered one of the best exponents of Brazilian rock music....
, Leila Pinheiro, Fafá de Belém
Fafá de Belém
Fafá de Belém, born Maria de Fátima Palha de Figueiredo in Belém do Pará on August 9, 1956, is a Brazilian singer considered one of the great female singers of MPB...
and Ângela Rô Rô
Angela Ro Ro
Ângela Maria Diniz Gonçalves , best known by the stage name Ângela Rô Rô, is a Brazilian singer-songwriter influenced by her idols Ella Fitzgerald, Maysa Matarazzo and Jacques Brel...
.
Studio albums
- Convite para ouvir Maysa (1956)
- Maysa (1957)
- Convite para ouvir Maysa n. 2 (1958)
- Convite para ouvir Maysa n. 3 (1958)
- Convite para ouvir Maysa n. 4 (1959)
- Maysa É Maysa... É Maysa... É Maysa (1959)
- Voltei (1960)
- Maysa Canta Sucessos (1960)
- Maysa, Amor... E Maysa (1961)
- Barquinho (1961)
- Maysa Sings Songs Before Dawn (1961)
- Canção do Amor Mais Triste (1962)
- Maysa (1964)
- Maysa (1966)
- Maysa (1969)
- Ando Só Numa Multidão de Amores (1970)
- Maysa (1974)
Compilation albums
- Os Grandes Sucessos de Maysa (1959)
- A Música de Maysa (1960)
- Ternura… é Maysa (1965)
- Dois na Fossa- Maysa & Tito Madi (1975)
- Para sempre Maysa (1977)
- Bom é Querer Bem (1978)
- Serie Retrospecto vol. 3 (1979)
- Convite para ouvir Maysa (1988)
- Maysa por ela mesma (1991)
- Canecão apresenta Maysa (1992)
- Tom Jobim por Maysa - Viva Maysa (1993)
- Maysa (1996)
- Tom Jobim por Maysa (1997)
- Bossa Nova por Maysa (1997)
- Barquinho (2000)
- Simplesmente Maysa (2000)
- Quatro em Um - Volume 13 (2001)
- Retratos - Maysa (2004)
- Novo Millennium (2005)
- Maysa - Quando Fala o Coração (2009)