Bibi Ferreira 1922-2019: An Appreciation

Bibi Ferreira in 2017 (Paula Johas/ PCRJ)

Bibi Ferreira 1922-2019

By Ernest Barteldes

 

Bibi Ferreira might not have been a household name in America, where she only performed her U.S. debut when she was already 91 years old – a memorable concert that took place at Alice Tully Hall in the fall of 2013 at Lincoln Center, when she sang a selection of songs from her long career, which spanned almost her entire life – but to Brazilians she was undoubtedly the greatest diva of Brazilian musical theater, cinema and TV.

When I heard that she had peacefully passed away at 96 in her Rio de Janeiro home on February 13, I thought of all the years I had seen her perform on Brazilian TV as a presenter, singer or even director – a role she took later in her years and also her numerous recordings, ranging from soundtracks of her musicals to Natal em Familia, a Christmas album (which turned out to be her last) she did in collaboration with numerous artists from her native country, including the late Emilio Santiago and samba singer Alcione.

Me and Bibi Ferreira, 2016

Ferreira ran the gamut of pretty much every medium in Brazil, going from performing the songs of Edith Piaf and Fado queen Amalia Rodrigues to directing a full opera, which she mentioned on an interview I did with her for The Brasilians Newspaper was a huge undertaking since she had to rehearse not one but two full groups because sometimes last-minute subs are necessary.

Although she had become hard of hearing and physically frail in her final years, her voice was impeccable, and she reached all the notes without a hitch, not sounding at all line the nonagenarian she was. She had great range and was a great interpreter of pretty much every style she tackled. On her second (and final) New York show at Symphony Space in 2016, she performed a retrospective of her most important shows, going from her Sinatra tribute to the much-appreciated Piaf covers – which even impressed the French when she sang there over the decades.

Cover of Bibi Ferreira: A Life on The Stage

Ferreira also released a coffee table book-sized book chronicling her career.  I was humbled to learn there was a quote from my review of her New York debut for All About Jazz. I was fortunate to have met her backstage after her second show and had my personal copy autographed – a possession I will cherish forever as a remembrance of this magnificent artist.

My quote from All About Jazz in Bibi: A Life on Stage

The TV Networks Fear Conservative Backlash? Maybe.

By Ernest Barteldes

I know this might be old news to some, but something in the televised media has been bothering me for a while, and it reached a boiling point when I heard a new show I discovered on Amazon Prime called “Good Girls Revolt” had been unceremoniously cancelled a month after its premiere – and more suspiciously following the 2016 presidential election – after only one season in spite of positive response by audiences and critics alike.

For those who are unaware of it, the series is based on the non-fiction book of the same name by Lynn Povich that chronicled the 1970 sex-discrimination lawsuit brought by female researchers against Newsweek magazine because the publication’s editors policy of not allowing women get promoted to reporters or editors.

I discovered the series at random as I browsed content on my Amazon Video library (Renata and I recently installed a Fire Stick onto our TV) one day. I watched one episode and was hooked – the storyline is complex and so are the characters – the pilot episode introduces the characters in a busy newsroom at the New York headquarters of the fictional “News of The Week” (I guess they couldn’t license “Newsweek”) in late 1969. On that first episode a new researcher is hired – a young Norah Ephron (Grace Gummer) and quickly breaks the office rules by rewriting a reporter’s copy. After being scolded by one of the editors (Jim Belushi), she abruptly quits and sparks a revolt among the other ‘girls’ in the office, who decide to do something about it.

As I watched the show I tried to learn more about it and was crushed to see that Amazon had let the show go and that no other network (streaming or otherwise) had picked it up. A piece on the Hollywood Reporter quoted co-star Genevieve Angelson’s tweet about it, which pointed at the election results as one of the causes for the show being pulled: “@Amazon dunno what to tell women, scared of their own president, who ask why you canceled a hit feminist show 30 days in.”

Her reaction got me thinking of another recent situation – in October 2016, NBC pulled an unaired Law & Order SVU episode based on the presidential election in which a Trump-inspired character is accused of sexually assaulting a woman. The episode was scheduled to run the day after the election but it following the upset on November 7^th, the episode was pushed and still hasn’t been aired.

NBC might have reasons to fear backlash from the White House – after all, Trump is still credited as executive producer on “Celebrity Apprentice,” and during the campaign he made multiple appearances on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon (including a much-derided episode in which the host was a bit too friendly with the then-Republican nominee), but this is no reason not to run an episode of a show whose stories are, after all, “ripped from the headlines.”

But what would Amazon have to fear? Did they fear their conservative subscribers (who praised a piece of shit, thinly-veiled conservative documentary called “Silenced” in which