90 Contemporary Hispanic Biography Volume 2
Vincius de Moraes
1913-1980
Songwriter, playwright, poet, diplomat
The name of Vincius de Moraes is not well known in
English-speaking countries, but he helped to create two
of the enduring icons of twentieth century culture: the
film Black Orpheus and the song Girl from Ipanema
were both taken from plays and songs he wrote.
Moraes was a Brazilian writer whose work over his long
career encompassed both the elite realm of poetry and
the democracy of popular song. In the latter sphere he
was the favored lyricist of the pioneering Brazilian
composer and pianist Antonio Carlos Jobim; together
the two were important shapers of the sophisticated
and internationally popular Brazilian music known as
bossa nova.
A Renaissance man whose career also included sub-
stantial activity as a film critic and as a member of
Brazils diplomatic corps, Moraes made only a few
excursions into playwriting and screenwriting. His
1954 play, Orfeu da Conceio, and its subsequent
film adaptation, known in English as Black Orpheus,
however, gained international renown. Those works,
landmark achievements in cross-cultural fusion, com-
bined the culture of Rio de Janeiros hillside favelas and
its African-descended inhabitants in a vivid synthesis
with a story drawn from the ancient Greek mythology
of Europe.
Named After Character in Novel
Moraes was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on October
19, 1913; his father was a scholar and poet who
named him after a character in a popular novel, Quo
Vadis?, which appeared the year he was born and was
set in the age of Jesus Christs birth. His education was
a highly literary one, and he was already a published
poet at age 19. His first book of poetry, O caminho
para a distncia (The Road into the Distance), ap-
peared in 1933. Moraes was finishing a law degree in
Rio at the time, although he was never active as a
lawyer. Instead, he was preparing for a career path well
trodden by Brazils educated elites: he would serve for
much of his life as a government official and diplomat.
Interested in contemporary trends in European poetry
and fluent in several languages, Moraes studied for a
year at Oxford University in England; he wrote some
poetry in English, and while he was there he was
married in absentia to his first wife, Beatrz. The title of
his 1935 volume, Forma e Exegese (Forms and
Exegeses), gives the flavor of the European methods
that permeated his youthful poetry. Another side of his
creative personality also manifested itself. As a result of
a teenage friendship with popular Brazilian vocalists
Paulo and Haroldo Tapajs, Moraes began to write
popular song lyrics. At the same time as he was
finishing law school and putting the final touches on his
first poetry publications in 1932 and 1933, Moraes
notched about a dozen songwriting credits, some of
them hits.
Moraes worked in the late 1930s for the Brazilian
governments film censorship office and in the early
1940s was active as a film critic, cultivating a friendship
with U.S. film director Orson Welles when the latter
visited Brazil. Moraes joined Brazils diplomatic corps
in 1943. A tour of Brazil with the radical American

At a Glance . . .
B orn October 19, 1913, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil;
died July 10, 1980, in Rio de Janeiro; married
twice. Education: Received law degree in Rio de
Janeiro, 1933; studied English literature, Oxford Uni-
versity, England, 1938.
Career: Published poetry and wrote popular songs,
1930s and 1940s; worked for Brazil government film
censorship office, late 1930s; wrote film criticism,
early 1940s; joined Brazilian diplomatic corps, 1943-
69; wrote play Orfeu da Conceio, basis for film
Black Orpheus, 1954; numerous popular compositions
in samba and bossa nova styles, late 1950s and 1960s;
wrote lyrics to song The Girl from Ipanema, 1963.
Awards: Grammy award, Song of the Year, for The
Girl from Ipanema, 1964.
novelist Waldo Frank in 1945 opened his eyes to the
lives ordinary Brazilians led. I saw crime and sexual
degradation and poverty for the first time, he told the
Saturday Review. Within thirty days I was no longer a
boy, no longer a citizen of the upper middle class,
prepared by their priesthood to be a good rightist.
Served as Diplomat
in Los Angeles
His earliest popular compositions had been in old-
fashioned forms such as the foxtrot, but now he came
under the spell of the Afro-Brazilian hybrid known as
samba, frowned upon by Brazils upper classes but
rapidly gaining adherents with its collection of dance
rhythms as infectious as any produced within the
African diaspora. He had both his cinematic and his
musical horizons widened when he was sent to the
Brazilian consulate in Los Angeles as assistant vice
consul in 1946. Moraes would later serve in diplomatic
posts in Uruguay and in France, but he returned to
Brazil for a time after his fathers death in 1950. His
earliest samba lyrics date from 1953.
At about that time, Moraes experienced a flash of
inspiration that joined the European and the Afro-
Brazilian halves of his cultural education. As he sat at
home in Rio, he told the Saturday Review, some-
where in the distance the Batucada drums were beating
their samba rhythms. I was reading a French anthology
of classical myths. Suddenlyboing!the two ideas
connected. By the following morning Moraes had
completed the first part of the scenario that would
de Moraes 91
become Orfeu da Conceio. The title, Moraes told
Saturday Review, roughly meant Orpheus Jones.
The writing of the play intersected with the chaotic
breakup of Moraess arranged marriage, and at one
point he lost the manuscript of the entire completed
third act.
Finally produced in 1954 with music by the then-
unknown Jobim, Orfeu da Conceio opened to
mixed reviews but won a major Brazilian theatrical
prize. Moraes had originally conceived of the Black
Orpheus story as a film, and had sold the rights to a
French production company. In 1956 the play was
adapted for the screen by Moraes and French director
Marcel Camus, with new music by Moraes and Jobim.
The U.S. release, entitled Black Orpheus, won an
Academy Award, and the film was honored with the
top Palme dor prize at Frances Cannes Film Festival.
Black Orpheus, set in Rio during Carnival (known in
the United States as Mardi Gras), adapted the mytho-
logical story of Orpheus, who tries to rescue his lover
Eurydice from the realm of death through the power of
song, to a contemporary Afro-Brazilian setting. In
Moraess story, Orpheus is a samba singer whose
beloved Eurydice, a girl newly arrived in Rio from
Brazils northeast, meets her death in a streetcar
accident. At several key junctures the Greek myth of
Orpheus is overlaid with characteristically Afro-
Brazilian images.
Bossa Nova Songwriting
Career Flourished
The film version of Black Orpheus vividly captured the
kaleidoscopic energy of the Brazilian Carnival celebra-
tion, but Moraes felt that the films French makers
treated Brazilian culture as an exotic experience rather
than really exploring the issues raised in his play.
Nevertheless, Black Orpheus marked the beginning of
a new level in the careers of both Moraes and Jobim,
who now began to experience wide success as a
popular songwriting team. They often worked in the
elegant, jazz-influenced bossa nova genre, pioneered
by Jobim and vocalist-guitarist Joo Gilberto. In 1963
their fame reached international dimensions with the
bossa nova song The Girl from Ipanema, which
featured Gilbertos wife, Astrud, on vocals. Ironically,
the song gained little popularity in Brazil itself.
Moraes wrote the song after Jobim became infatuated
with an attractive young woman whom he saw through
the window of a bar where the two songwriting part-
ners were relaxing, not far from Rios famed Ipanema
Beach. (The street where the bar is located was later
named after Moraes.) The Girl from Ipanema, fitted
with a verse of English lyrics, perfectly evoked a
tropical vacationland for U.S. listeners. The song won
a Grammy award for Record of the Year in 1964, and
touched off an international bossa nova craze that still
echoed 20 years later in such recordings as Nigerian
jazz singer Sades Smooth Operator. The Girl from
92 Contemporary Hispanic Biography Volume 2
Ipanema has been recorded well over 100 times and
remains a jazz standard.
Bounced from the diplomatic corps after running afoul
of Brazils military dictatorship in 1969, Moraes
emerged as a thorn in the regimes side in the 1970s.
In concert appearances he satirized the regimes ex-
cesses, but his stature as an elder statesman of Brazilian
music and poetry protected him from reprisals. He
remained active as a lyricist and poet until the end of his
life. Vincius de Moraes died in Rio de Janeiro of a lung
disease on July 10, 1980. Numerous releases of his
music remain available, and in 1999 Orfeu da Con-
ceio was filmed once again by Brazilian new-wave
director Carlos Diegues.
Selected writings
O caminho para a distncia (poetry), 1933.
Forma e exegese (poetry), 1935.
Novos poemas (poetry), 1938.
Cinco elegias (poetry), 1938, pub. 1943.
Orfeu da Conceio (play), 1956.
The Girl from Ipanema (song text), 1962.
Numerous popular song lyrics in samba and bossa nova
styles.
Sources
Books
Bradbury, Malcolm, ed., Penguin Companion to
American Literature, McGraw-Hill, 1971.
Foster, David William, and Virginia Ramos Foster,
Modern Latin American Literature, Ungar, 1975.
McGowan, Chris, and Ricardo Pessanha, The Brazil-
ian Sound, Billboard Books, 1991.
Stern, Irwin, Dictionary of Brazilian Literature,
Greenwood Press, 1988.
Periodicals
New York Times, July 11, 1980, p. A15.
Saturday Review, February 9, 1974, p. 30.
On-line
All Music Guide, http://www.allmusic.com
http://www.rootsworld.com/rw/feature/brazil-
orpheus.html
James M. Manheim