Amélia Rey Colaço

Amélia Rey Colaço was born on 2 March 1898 in Lisbon, Portugal, the youngest of four sisters. She came from a privileged, artistic and multinational background. Her father, Alexandre Rey Colaço, born in Tangier in 1854, had a Portuguese mother and a French father. Orphaned at a young age, his training as a pianist started at the Madrid Royal Conservatory and was continued in Paris and Berlin, as a result of the patronage of the Count of Daupiás. As a pianist and composer, he became music teacher to Prince Luís Filipe of Portugal and his brother, the future King Manuel II. Amélia Rey Colaço’s mother, Alice Lafourcade Schmidt, was born in Chile, had a French mother and a German father and taught her daughters several languages. She grew up in Berlin with her mother and stepfather, a musical instrument dealer. Schmidt’s mother became known in Berlin for organizing a salon where she gathered promising figures from the artistic world. It was at this salon that Schmidt met Alexandre Rey Colaço.

In December 1911, Amélia Rey Colaço visited Berlin with her sister, Maria, with the aim of studying music. Here, she also found a stimulating environment at her grandmother's salon. She also had the opportunity to attend shows directed by Max Reinhardt at the Deutsches Theater, and it is said that this attracted her to acting. On her return to Portugal she started to take acting lessons with the actor, Augusto Rosa, with whom her father was good friends. In 1915, she and her sisters went to Madrid where they recited before King Alfonso XIII and his court. This familiarised her with performing in public at the highest level.

Following a recommendation by Augusto Rosa, Rey Colaço’s acting debut occurred in 1917 at the then Teatro República (now Teatro São Luiz) in Lisbon, in the play Marinela by the Spanish author and playwright, Benito Pérez Galdós. To play the character, a young vagabond, she practised for months walking barefoot and wearing rags, inside the garden of her family home. On stage with two of Portugal’s best-known actors, Palmira Bastos and Adelina Abranches, her performance received widespread enthusiasm in most of the Lisbon press. She stayed at the Teatro São Luiz until 1919, refusing invitations to join Spanish companies. She was then hired for the summer season of the D. Maria II National Theatre. In 1920 she married the actor and director, Felisberto Robles Monteiro. They founded their own theatre company, known as the Companhia Rey Colaço-Robles Monteiro. This company was to last 53 years, mainly playing in the National Theatre, for which the company won the concession in 1929. In addition to performances in Lisbon the company also toured to other parts of the country, including its islands.