MUSIC AND ITS HISTORY

VINÍCIUS DE MORAES

Marcos Vinícius de Melo Moraes was born in Rio de Janeiro, on October 19th 1913. If alive today, he would be turning 96 this month.

The intellectual Vinícius de Moraes was a singer, composer, poet, attorney, journalist and diplomat. Although apparently very busy with so many activities, he had enough time to a special thing: getting married! He got married many times.

The first wedding was in 1939, when he married Beatriz Azevedo Melo. In 1951 the second union came, this time with Lilá Maria Esquerdo e Bôscoli. In 1958 the great poet and Maria Lúcia Proença tied the knot. Five years later, in 1963, “the one” would be Nelita Abreu Rocha. In 1969 Vinícius married Cristina Gurjão and one year later the actress Gésse Jêssy, who was from Bahia. After some time, in 1976, he proposed to Marta Santamaria and in 1988, when he was 65, he married Gilda de Queiróz Matoso.

Vinícius de Moraes was constantly in love. It could only be his these lines on the famous Soneto da Fidelidade (Sonnet on Fidelity):

I could say to myself of the love (I had):
Let it not be immortal, since it is flame
But let it be infinite while it lasts.*

* Translated by Ashley Brown - An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Brazilian Poetry.
(Extract taken from the website http://www.sergipe.com.br/paulo/vinicius.html).