Part of the Arts & Humanities Festival 2015 - Fabrication
Presented by the Department of Music, the Department of Spanish, Portuguese & Latin American Studies and the Brazil Institute.

The Tram Conductor's Sweetheart

During his brief life, the prolific Noel Rosa (1910-1937) composed some 260 songs, many of which are still regularly performed today. The Radio Club of Brazil hired him in 1935 and in that capacity he wrote, with Arnold Gluckmann, the music for A Noiva do Condutor, or The Tram Conductor’s Sweetheart.

This radio operetta tells the story of an electric tram conductor, Joaquim, who pretends to be a lawyer in order to win the heart of his beloved, Helena. The plot examines the moral values of the operetta’s characters and reveals their striving for money and social status. With humour and exquisite irony, key characteristics of Noel Rosa’s work, the operetta is typically Carioca – that is, typically Rio de Janeiro; it portrays the fickleness of people’s values as they shift from moment to moment depending on the circumstances.

This performance will take you back to a Rio de Janeiro radio studio in the 1920s and will open with a radio roundtable with Professor David Treece, Dr Fred Moehn, Dr Felipe Botelho and Dr Vinicius Mariano de Carvalho. This will be followed by a staging of the operetta, performed by the King’s Brazil Ensemble and soloists, conducted by Dr Vinicius Mariano de Carvalho.

An Operetta for Radio by Noel Rosa and Arnold Gluckmann.

Translation for this performance by Professor David Treece, with arrangements by Stefan Metzger.

David Treece is Camoes Professor of Portuguese at King’s College London. His research is on Brazilian popular music, translation, and the culture and politics of race and Afro-Brazilian identity.

Felipe Botelho Correa is a lecturer at King’s College London in the areas of Brazilian, Portuguese and Lusophone African studies. His current research focuses on literary and cultural history of Brazil in the early twentieth century.

Fred Moehn is a lecturer in Music at King’s College London. His most recent book is Contemporary Carioca: Technologies of mixing in a Brazilian music scene (Duke University Press, 2012).

Vinicius Mariano de Carvalho is a lecturer at Brazil Institute at King’s College London. He researches in Brazilian culture and music. In 2015 he started the King’s Brazil Ensemble.

This event is open to all and free to attend, but booking is required. 
Please direct enquiries to ahri@kcl.ac.uk 
Registration URL: https://noiva-do-condutor.eventbrite.co.uk