Chiquinha Gonzaga

Chiquinha Gonzaga (1847-1935) was a Brazilian composer, pianist, and the first woman orchestral conductor in Brazil. Gonzaga’s compositional career began with the success of her 1877 polka Atraente, and the 1885 premiere of her operetta A corte na roça at the Teatro Principe Imperial earned her the name “The Feminine Offenbach.” More than 300 of her songs and dances were published, including waltzes, polkas, tangos, mazurkas, quadrilles, gavottes, habaneras, barcarolles, serenatas, maxixes, lundus, fados, moodinhas, marchas, and choros. Gonzaga also collaborated with the most renowned Brazilian playwrights of the time to compose 77 stage works with subjects that dealt primarily with local, commonplace events.

Much of her music was tremendously popular during her lifetime–the stage work Forrobodó (1912), for example, was performed 1500 times, and her tango O Gaúcho (1895) became one of the most famous pieces at the turn of the twentieth century. Gonzaga toured extensively in Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, and England during the first decade of the twentieth century, and her operettas were performed repeatedly to great acclaim. In the next decade, her march Ô abre-alas became the prototype of the popular “carnival march” genre.