Adelina Abranches(1866-1945)
- Actress
A great name of the Portuguese theatre, Adelina Abranches was paid a
national homage at the Teatro São Luiz as of 1928, and in the presence
of General Carmona, the President of the Republic himself. And yet
there had been nothing to suggest that Margarida Adelina, born into
very poor Lisbon family in 1866, would become such an admired star of
the stage. The fact is that, like at the end of a Dickens novel, fate,
through a quirk of which it holds the secret, proved favorable to her
despite a very problematic beginning in life. Indeed misery had struck
after her father had left the family home, forcing his wife, little
Adelina and her eight brothers and sisters to work in order to bring
back home what little money they could. But the silver lining was that
to get a few reis, five-year-old Adelina, still unable to read and
write, was propelled on to a stage. Of course she was only an extra in
'Os Meninos Grandes' but she enjoyed the experience and soon expressed
the wish to renew it, which she would actually go on doing for...
seventy-odd years! She was still only eleven when she created a
sensation with her interpretation of a transvestite prince in 'Leonor
de Bragança'. After this, she never stopped working, until her death in
1945 at age 79, in Portugal and in Brazil, in classic, popular or
avant-garde works. She even founded her own company in the 1910s. As
for her contribution to the silver screen it unfortunately remains
negligible, the great lady of the Portuguese boards having appeared
only in secondary roles and in no more than three pictures, 'Maria do
Mar (1930)', 'Lisboa (1930)' and 'A Rosa do Adro (1938)'. But theatre
was her vocation, not cinema.
