Helena Nobre: uma musicista paraense da primeira metade do século XX

Abstract

Helena Couto Nobre (1888-1965) is part of the third generation Nobre Family, who, as her ancestors and siblings, had a career in music, excelling in the art of opera singing, playing, composing, and also giving private lessons. She had the opportunity to go on stage with several of her relatives, especially with her brother Ulysses Nobre – a pair of singers who today is remembered under the title Nobre Brothers. With Ulysses, Helena shared not only his career but also the stigma of leprosy: even cured, there were the consequences; even singing, they were cloistered at home on Campos Sales Street, which was baptized by the Society of Para as the Golden Cage, for keeping the Uirapurus from Para. Helena became known as the Nightingale from Para in several Brazilian cities and in Europe, through music programs broadcast by Pará Radio Club - PRC-5 – that she took part. Not yet had the career of this woman investigated, who, even with the stigma of the disease, had the courage to expose and take profession of a singer. The current tendency of the historian is to reconstruct its historical object from the representations on it. So in this sense, the following master’s research - Helena Nobre: a paraense musician in of the first half of the twentieth century – aimed to investigate the history of Helena Nobre and her musical activity, building, from the biographical method and the social representations, her intellect and musical biography. This research also sought to address the interpretive and compositional repertoire of Helena Nobre and the major artistic events that she took part, realizing her presence on the musical scene of her time. The social representations of the society of her time were taken from historical sources – oral, documentary and literature – through interviews with relatives and friends of the singer and through a systematic reviews of the literature on public and private collections of Belém, in sources such as: photos, newspapers, magazines, letters, musical scores, concert programs, scrapbooks, personal belongings, paintings, poetry, posthumous tributes. To support this research, it was sought an approach with the theoretical studies about: historical musicology, gender relations, cultural heritage and living memory. The aim is to expand the musical historiography of Pará, taking the silence that has hovered over the history of life, music education and performance of Helena Nobre.