ABSTRACT
The first act of Julio Dantas's 1901 play A Severa, is the story of the Lisbon fadista Maria Severa and her affair with the slumming Count of Marialva. The blurring of myth and history that is illustrated in their story serves as an appropriate starting point for a study of Portuguese fado. Another oft-quoted introduction to fado's ontology is a song made famous by Amalia Rodrigues entitled 'Tudo Isto E Fado', in which the narrator initially claims not to know what fado is before going on to list a number of its features: 'defeated souls, lost nights, bizarre shadows in the Mouraria'. This chapter demonstrates this seeming clash between the local and the universal as the starting point for 'zooming out' of the world of fado and considers some of the debates and theories about loss, memory and nostalgia. It discusses Amalia, her work, her life and career, which can be quite easily presented in terms of melancholy and loss.
