Mateus, and Portugal, in mourning for Fernando de Albuquerque – Observer
You have free access to all the articles of the Observer for being our subscriber.
In a symphony of historical, architectural, landscape, musical and literary elements, Casa de Mateus, in Vila Real, where Fernando de Albuquerque leaves a substantial legacy, combines a throbbing heart of contemporary and modernism with the most remote Portuguese.
In a rare mixture of noblemanship/aristocracy, the Father of Fernando, who tragically disappeared in 1973, D. Francisco de Sousa e Albuquerque, worked his whole life for the institution, in 1970, his house as the Foundation of Casa de Mateus, in a singularity costume. that was a story of survival of a very rich heritage and culture.
The trait of his Father opened a wide avenue for Fernando de Albuquerque to his exceptional creativity in the world of Culture. And to his nobility, that of the morgadio, which was the most important he boasted, he combined other nobles that he also carried in his blood: in addition to being 12th Morgado de Mateus, he was 6th Count of Vila Real, 5th Count of Melo and 4th Count of Mangualde. And in addition to all the titles, with tenacity, he added to Mateus a content and a prestige that, coming from afar, in our land, have no parallel.
On the shoulders of Fernando and his wife, Maria Amélia Nunes da Ponte de Albuquerque, the seams of that Monument of Portuguese Baroque balance that is the Mateus Palace were perfectly seated. The two, the tailors of the very fact that they wear the Monument now with gala, artisans of the private cultural dynamization that is known in Portugal, and that the State justly greater supported, as the profound ones did private entities, and an endless number of figures of great national and international prestige.
The Palace, National Monument, June 23, 1910, thanks to the change in culture that from the beginning, managed to remain younger today than when it was built in the 18th century, a surprising ensemble, of which Fernando was the great conductor , with his wife Maria Amélia to help the symphony he composed, she an unavoidable knowledge, enchantment and eternal, always present in the most complex circumstances, symbolized in the splendorous rose garden of his initiative, with about 3,000 plants that will give color to the audience, the beautiful boxwood garden at the back of Mateus.
Of the 5 or 6 Palaces existing in our country, belonging to the great Portuguese, and which are families that are comparable to each other for their splendor and splendor, the only one in which in the last 40 years has throbbed with strong life and its only historical structural significance, is Mateus.
Mateus rose to national and international notoriety in the second half of the 70s with the seminars rethink Portugal and Culture in Debate, bringing together the greatest exponents of Portuguese literature, music, thought and politics. The Palace has since existed as a pillar of the Douro and Trás-os-Montes, with its Courses for Resident Artists, Music Festivals, the Casa de Mateus International Institute, its Collective Translation Seminars of Poesia Viva, and its support for the visual arts.
YOU Music Meetings at Casa de Mateus constituted one of the cultural initiatives that most marked deep Portugal. Starting on the 28th of June of each year, I visited almost daily concerts, which took place in September at the Palace, and even in the remote lands of the interior of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro. E. sowing” of erudite music throughout the North, turning, in addition to Vila Real, other relatively small cities and towns, into true capitals of culture, added the interpreters of incomparable prestige who access to perform in Mateus and in all these locations. Berganza celebrities of the mezzopranos of all times Ileana Cotrubas the greatest tempos in Teresa, pianist Baldwin, pianist with 10000 greatest tempos, such as Teresa Berganza of the great divas, Mário Laginha, our greatest and most composer, Dago Linhares, prestigious and laureate Brazilian guitarist specialized in chamber music, Gustav Leonhardt, one of the greatest harpsichordists ever, and many others, brought the magic of great music to the Douro. In early music, classical guitar, singing, opera, orchestral music, Fernando de Albuquerque lent liveliness and brilliance to everything. The interior of the country enriched, the “province” made capital, the music echoing inside the deep Portugal, emerging and enriched by all this.
Literature was an area in which Matthew excelled. Two Nobel Prize winners (Camilo José Cela and José Saramago) and other great figures of Portuguese literature were recipients of the coveted D. Diniz Prize, created in 1980. I recall the names of Mário Cláudio, Marcello Duarte Mathias, Rui Ramos, Manuel Alegre, José Cardoso Pires, Eduardo Lourenço, Nuno Júdice, Sophia Mello Breyner Andresen, David Mourão Ferreira, Virgílio Ferreira, Agustina Bessa Luís, and many other genius writers who were awarded this prestigious Literary, destined annually to the author of a work of poetry, fiction, or essay, by juries composed of the elite of the national intelligentsia.
In 2013, the writer Vasco Graça Moura, received the Morgado de Mateus Award, created to distinguish only the body of work of an author. This Prize was also instituted in 1980, the year in which the ex-Áqueo winners were Miguel Torga and Carlos Drummond de Andrade. It has not been reassigned.
Next to the gates of the Palace gardens on a summer morning, you can see the figures of intellectuals, musicians, writers, students, tourists (120,000 visitors in 2019) wandering around, and they feel warm like all the unmistakable mosses, the boxwoods and other flora of the region give the atmosphere, in the contrasts of lights and shadows that the transparencies of the air of the mountains of Marão accentuate.
Vila Real de Trás-os-Montes is a model of an inland city that not only did not become deserted, but also acquired a cultural and economic stature and social dynamism in Portugal in recent decades. “Those who are there send it beyond Marão”, as the saying goes: and they did it well! It is really impressive the impact that the University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro, and the Casa de Mateus Foundation had on the development of Vila Real and the entire interior that exists under its sphere of influence!
Fernando de Albuquerque was only able to maintain everything that is necessary in the Palace, as he created an auditorium, which faces an old threshing floor, as was discovered at the bottom of the park the Artists’ Residence, by the architect Teresa Nunes da Ponte, a paradigmatic example in the art of recovering ancient structures. This Residence, which is about 300 meters from the Palace, is divided into two areas, interspersed by a river, with its daughter-in-law. In harmonious spaces and their imaginatively distributed, wide and wide study rooms and study rooms, with the musical rooms, and living rooms, but mainly intimate, with wide wide doors and stretches of wide, situated, luminous stairs. All designed for resident artists. See: in addition to many good paintings of figures of people and figures of recognition on the walls, several of great international artists from the world of the arts of thought. there have passed.
The Republic, which recognizes those who are most notable in the country, should have laid on his chest with medals, decorations, and with all the prebends and honors that appear in its catalogue. At the end of 2021, and two months before his death, Fernando de Albuquerque was finally awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of the Infante by the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, an honor that has long been due. He is celebrated today and always a Portuguese with illustrious nicknames, including Culture.