MANHÃ DE CARNAVAL lyrics/Words by Joel Sattler
Based on a tune by Luiz Bonfá
From the film, "Black Orpheus" (Orfeu Negro)
New title: "The Morn of the Carnival"
The sun rises over the sea
But she is no longer with me
I still remember the day
The Mardi Gras parade
We lived in a masquerade
Like clowns in a play
She painted a smile on my face
Then gave me a final embrace
How was I to know
That I'd let her go
The morn of the carnival?
Though I know in my heart
We're forever apart
Still I long for that morning again
****
We danced in the sun yesterday
Tomorrow was far and away
We had our lives to live yet
Our love was as warm as a breath
Until we looked upon
The mask of death
One night and one morning of love
Now gone as if it never was
But I recall when
Our song had no end
The morn of the carnival
And as she walked away
I can still hear her say
All my life has led up to today
And as she walked away
I can still hear her say
All my life has led up to...........
© 2009
I am posting this lyric in the hope that someone out there can use it,
but please contact me if you want to use these words for one of your songs.
All rights reserved, but feel free to share: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
The following information is taken from the Wikipedia
[and, thus, is in the public domain]:
Black Orpheus (Portuguese: Orfeu Negro) is a 1959 film
made in Brazil by French director Marcel Camus.
It is based on the play Orfeu da Conceição by Vinicius de Moraes,
which is an adaptation of the Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice,
setting it in the modern context of a favela
in Rio de Janeiro during the Carnaval.
The film was an international co-production
between production companies in Brazil, France and Italy.
The film is particularly renowned for its soundtrack
by bossa nova legend Antonio Carlos Jobim,
featuring songs such as "Manhã de Carnaval" (written by Luiz Bonfá)
and "A felicidade" that were to become bossa nova classics....
....The movie opens with images of white Greek statues
that explode to reveal black men dancing samba to drums in a favela.
Orpheus (Breno Mello) is a trolley driver in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil,
as well as a playboy. Although engaged to be wed,
he does not seem very enthusiastic about the concept of marriage
and spends the majority of the film trying to avoid his fiancée,
Mira (Lourdes de Oliveira).
The film begins with Orpheus and his fiancée going to get a marriage license.
The clerk at the courthouse makes reference
to the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice,
causing Orpheus's fiancée to get jealous and assume
that there is another woman in his life.
After they get the license, Mira agrees to loan Orpheus
the money to buy her own ring because Orpheus wants
to get his guitar out of the pawn shop for the carnival.
When Orpheus gets home,
he finds that his neighbor Serafina's (Léa Garcia) cousin
named Eurydice (Marpessa Dawn) has been visiting.
Death (the man in the skeleton suit) is after Eurydice.
This is shown in a scene in which the man
chases her down and Orpheus gallantly goes to her rescue.
Orpheus, upon seeing Eurydice,
wins her graces by playing her a song on his guitar.
He is impressed upon her telling him the story of Orpheus and Eurydice
and letting him know that she knows he knows of it also
because of the song which he had just been playing.
Orpheus is a pleasant break from the insanity of Carnival,
which seems to agitate Eurydice's already frightened state.
The two of them fall in love, yet are constantly on the run
from both Mira and Death, both of whom wish to kill Eurydice.
On the day of Carnival, Eurydice dresses in Serafina's costume
in order help Serafina spend more time with her navy man;
the costume keeps Eurydice's face concealed.
During the festival, Orpheus uses every excuse
to be able to dance with Eurydice
(who is supposed to be Serafina)
rather than with Mira.
He consistently tells Mira to get back to her place.
Eventually, Eurydice's identity is revealed
and she is forced once again to run for her life from both Mira and Death.
This time she is not so lucky and is killed accidentally by Orpheus
in his own trolley station when he turns the power on and electrocutes her.
Death says "Now she's mine" before knocking Orpheus out.
Despite the obvious fact that she is dead and the less obvious fact
that he is the one who actually killed her,
Orpheus looks for Eurydice within the Bureau of Missing Persons.
The janitor there tells him that the place holds only papers
and that no people would be found there.
The illiterate janitor asks Orpheus if he can read,
then tells him his reading ability will not help him find his love.
The janitor, taking pity on Orpheus, takes him down the stairs
and to the place of a Macumba ritual,
a regional form of the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé.
At the gate, there is a dog named Cerberus,
after the three-headed dog of Hades in Greek mythology.
At this ritual, Orpheus is able to channel the spirit of Eurydice
through the body of an old woman.
Orpheus calls out to her and asks to see her,
but Eurydice begs him not to look toward the voice, lest he lose her forever.
When he looks back to see Eurydice,
her spirit leaves the woman and he loses her forever
(This is in direct correlation to the Greek myth
in which Orpheus is able to save his love Eurydice
but loses her forever when he looks back at her).
Orpheus wanders in mourning for the remainder of the film.
His wanderings take him to the City Morgue, where he retrieves Eurydice's body.
He carries her in his arms across town and up the hill toward his home.
(The Greek Orpheus also wandered around after Eurydice's death,
refusing all other women until he is killed
by Thracian Maenads in the heat of Dionysian ritual.)
Like the Greek Orpheus, this Orpheus is killed by a group of apparently crazed women.
As we see Orpheus' and Serafina's shack burning
(a fire set by Mira, no doubt), Mira flings a stone that hits him in the head
and knocks him over a cliff to his death as he carried Eurydice's limp body.
There are two children, Benedito and Zeca,
who follow Orpheus around throughout the plot.
They believe that it is Orpheus's guitar that causes the sun to rise in the morning.
After Orpheus death, Benedito insists that Zeca pick up the guitar
and play so that the sun may rise again.
Zeca plays, and the sun does rise.
A little girl comes by, gives Zeca a single flower
and the film ends with the three of them dancing.....
==================================
Original lyrics in Portuguese by Antônio Maria Araújo de Morais:
Manha, tao bonita manha
De um dia feliz che chegou!
O sol no ceu surgiu
E em cada cor brilhou.
Voltou o sonho entao
Ao coraçao.
Depois deste dia feliz,
Nao sei se outro dia virá,
E nossa amanha,
Tao bela afinal amanha
De carnaval.
Canta o meu coraçao.
Alegria voltou. Tao feliz
A manha deste amor.
Manha tao bonita manha!
Na vida uma nova cançao,
Cantando só teus olhos,
Teu riso e tuas maos,
Pois ha de haver um dia
Em que virás.
Das cordas do meu violao,
Que só teu amor procurou,
Vem uma voz falar
Dos beijos perdidos
Nos lábios teus.
Canta o meu coraçao.
Alegria voltou. Tao feliz
A manha deste amor.
.
.