This doodle celebrates Brazilian icon Bibi Ferreira. Whether she sang in Portuguese, English, French or Spanish, her voice reached the hearts of millions around the world.
Ferreira was born on this day in 1922 into an artistic family in Rio de Janeiro.
Her father was a director and her mother a dancer. Just a month old, Ferreira made her stage debut as the final understudy for Baby Doll in one of her father’s plays. At the age of three, Ferreira toured South America dancing with a ballet company.
While studying at the American Foreign Service School in Rio, Ferreira became fascinated with ballet and opera. She also learned piano, violin and guitar, and learned various languages in her little free time.
In 1941, Ferreira landed her first leading role alongside her father in the play The Innkeeper. After three more years with her father’s company, she decided to start her own company. Her group produced Portuguese translations of famous plays and performed their own production, “Angelus.”
Ferreira really became a star in Brazil in the 1960s, when she starred in the Portuguese translations of My Fair Lady, Hello, Dolly! and Man from La Mancha. These productions ushered in a new era of Brazilian theater.
Ferreira continued to star in and even direct musicals for the rest of her career; her play Piaf: Uma Estrela da Canção (Piaf: A Star of Song) toured Europe and eventually won the French government’s Arts and Letters Prize. Ferreira continued to sing into her 90s, inspiring women of all ages to embrace her songs.
Happy Birthday, Bibi Ferreira!