Gilda de Abreu’s O Ébrio as a Unique Intermedial Project

This chapter discusses the unique case of performer Vicente Celestino and his film-director wife, Gilda de Abreu, who together constituted an intermedial circuit of their own. An intermedial artist par excellence, Celestino was active in radio, revue theatre, cinema, opera and operetta. One of his greatest successes was the song ‘O Ébrio’ (The Drunkard), released on Guanabara Radio in 1935. Over thirty years, he and Abreu adapted ‘O Ébrio’ to different media – radio, record, theatre, cinema and literature – and it also came out in a TV soap opera version. The chapter analyses the film O Ébrio (1946), directed by Abreu, in light of the song’s multimedia transpositions, with special attention to the film’s musical sequences, where the frontiers between actor and character are shattered.