I recently wrote about a huge Madonna show in Rio. She was invited by a big bank to perform on the Copacabana beach. The performance was a great success, although musically it drew attention to the fact that in a show where all the numbers were grand, the number of musicians on stage was… zero.

Many analyzes were made following the event, drawing attention to the good shape of the performer. Far be it from me to dispute the good shape of the artist, but I confess that, artistically speaking, a 65-year-old woman using playback moves me to a much lesser extent than an 84-year-old woman singing live on stage.

Forget Madonna: Suely is the real thing!

Last week I had the opportunity to applaud the great Brazilian actress Suely Franco, performing a tribute to the star Virgínia Lame, who would have turned one hundred years old in 2020. The play is called “The Brazilian Vedete” And if you do not know what the word “vedete” means, the very infornative program of the play explains:

“The star actresses of the revue theater were known as “vedetes”. The word “védette”, of Italian origin, means “exposure” or “evidence”. In Brazil, the term also came to designate people or things that are extremely desired.“

The actresses of the revue theater, whose peak in Brazil occurred between the 1930s and 1950s suffered from double prejudice: both on the part of society in general, which considered the profession analogous to prostitution, and on the part of dramatic actresses and radio singers, who often considered their colleagues in the revue theater as less serious professionals.

In its origins, revue theater is linked to a presentation, a “review” of the outstanding political and social events of the year, and in the case of Virgínia Lane, who was a singer, a dancer and a composer, the world of feathers and sparkles of revue theater intersects with political milestones of Brazil, since she was for ten years the declared lover (or, as it was presented in the newspapers of the time, “the favourite vedete”) of President Getúlio Vargas.

She was one of the first to see him dead, in what would go down in history as a case of suicide, but which Virginia swore until the end of her days that it had actually been a murder.

Reviewing the importance of the revue theater and reliving the stories of these great artists is already quite moving, but when it happens through the work of an actress like Suely Franco it means much more than that. Proud and majestic on stage, at the age of 84, singing live, loud and clear and delivering her text with timing and panache, Suely turns the play into an anti-ageism ode, as well.

I left the theater deeply moved and with my faith in humanity renewed. There is something very powerful in this type of experience, a power so great that it is capable of shining brighter than cell phone screens (the fact that people are no longer able to turn them off for two hours is a very sad topic that I do not want to talk about now so as not to starve the mood ) and sounds louder than all the annoying ringtones.

It reminds us that the strength of art asserts itself over time and the inevitable finiteness of our existence. Or, as the 1979 song While Ironing Pants, by Ednardo, would say:

Because singing feels like not dying
It’s like not forgetting
That life is right

Be seeing you!

G.F.