Francisco Alves
Francisco Alves — nicknamed 'Chico Viola' and crowned 'Rei da Voz' (King of the Voice) by a radio announcer in 1933 — was Brazil's dominant recording singer of the 1920s-40s, cutting the country's first electrical recording in 1927 and eventually more than 500 78 rpm sides. His full, projected voice drew on the bel canto vocal school and his own idol, Vicente Celestino, giving early Brazilian popular song an operatic grandeur before younger singers he personally discovered and launched, Orlando Silva chief among them, pared that grandeur down into something quieter.
Reference sources on Brazilian popular song describe Alves as influenced by 'his idol Vicente Celestino' and guided, like nearly every singer of his generation, by the operatic bel canto school Celestino carried out of the Teatro Municipal and into popular recording — the reason early Alves sides lean on sustained, full-voiced high notes closer to opera than to the intimate crooning that followed.
listen forCelestino's Portuguese-language 'Palhaço' — his own recording of the Pagliacci aria 'Vesti la giubba' — is straight bel canto: sustained power breaking into an actor's declamatory sob. Alves' 'Ora Vejam Só' pulls that same projected, chest-voice power into a Carnival samba, the opera-house technique applied to popular song.