Albuquerque, Severino João

Biodiversity Informatics

FALL 1999 169 Alfredo Dias Gomes (1922-1999) One of Brazil's top playwrights of the century, Alfredo Dias Gomes, died 18 May 1999 in a traffic accident in São Paulo. Dias Gomes gave the national stage a number of memorable characters and plot lines, and despite his considerable difficulties with official censorship throughout his career, some of his plays stand among the most important in twentieth-century Brazilian theatre. O pagador de promessas (1960) stands as the absolute paradigm of Brazilian regionalist drama. Along with O berço do herói (1965) and several other plays, it confirms that Dias Gomes's merit as a playwright lies in the fact that he is able to incorporate regional elements (local color, language, characters) and still present us with a universally valid work. Dias Gomes had a lifelong interest in historical drama, having authored one of the best such plays in all of Brazilian theatre, O Santo Inquérito (1966). For long periods of his career he was also involved in radio and television. Three of his dramatic works have had phenomenal success in other media as well: the film version oí O pagador de promessas was awarded the First Prize in major international film festivals (including Cannes in 1962), while O berço do herói and O bem-amado (1963), a satire of corrupt and hypocritical Brazilian politicians, achieved tremendous popularity as telenovelas. In fact, the Globo Network adaptation of O berço do herói (titled Roque Santeiro, 1985-86) became the most popular program of all time in Brazilian television. Dias Gomes also wrote novels (such as Sucupira, ame-a ou deixe-a and Odorico na cabeça) and his autobiography, Apenas um subversivo, was published in 1998. He was inducted into the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1991. Severino J. Albuquerque University of Wisconsin-Madison 

Alfredo Dias Gomes (1922-1999)

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Alfredo Dias Gomes (1922-1999)

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The University of Kansas: Journals@KU