Viúva Guerreiro

Origin

Rio Bonito, RJ

Also known as

Serafina Augusta Mourão do Vale

Years Active

1900–1936

Genres

choro, waltz, salon music

Instruments

piano

Biography

Serafina Augusta Mourão do Vale, popularly known as Viúva Guerreiro, was born in Rio Bonito, in the state of Rio de Janeiro, on September 9, 1858. Raised at Fazenda do Barreado, she moved to the capital of Rio de Janeiro after marrying merchant and piano tuner João S. de Oliveira Barreto in 1883, with whom she began managing the business establishment "Ao Piano de Cristal".

Following her widowhood in 1900, Serafina took over the business and began composing, demonstrating her works on the piano for the store's customers and dedicating herself especially to the waltz. With her second marriage in 1902 to lawyer Joaquim Augusto Guerreiro Lima — who would pass away in 1910 — she definitively adopted the nickname by which she entered the history of Brazilian music.

Her establishment, renamed Casa Viúva Guerreiro and located on the traditional Rua do Ouvidor, turned into a cultural hub of Rio's Belle Époque and a fundamental meeting point for great names of choro and samba, such as Sinhô and Caninha. Serafina passed away in Rio de Janeiro on August 11, 1936, leaving behind a vast body of salon music for solo piano preserved on musicological portals such as Musica Brasilis.