The wake of actress Aracy Balabanian, who died at the age of 83 in Rio de Janeiro, will take place this Tuesday (8) in the capital of Rio de Janeiro and will be open to the public.
The ceremony, open to the public, will take place from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm at the Salão Assyrio at Theatro Municipal do Rio de Janeiro.
After the wake, Aracy’s body will be cremated in a ceremony restricted to friends and relatives, at Cemitério do Caju, informed the advisory of the Theater.
With more than half a century of career, the artist was marked by her roles in soap operas and other TV Globo productions, such as the characters Cassandra, in “Sai de Baixo”, and Dona Armênia, in “Rainha da Sucata”.
Miguel Falabella and other celebrities mourned the death. On her official Instagram profile, Falabella thanked Aracy for her friendship and partnership on and off stage.
“Thank you for the honor of having been by your side exercising our trade, thank you for the affection, for the advice, for the laughs and for the life that you so delicately offered me”, he wrote.
President Lula also used social media to mourn the actress’s death and praise her dedication to art.
Brazil woke up today without Aracy Balabanian, who was part of the Brazilian stages and TV for more than 50 years. From her stage debut at the hands of Augusto Boal, to shows at the former Teatro Brasileiro de Comédia, still in the 60s, Aracy starred in programs such as Vila…
— Lula (@LulaOficial) August 7, 2023
Daughter of immigrants and passion for theater
Aracy was born in Campo Grande, Mato Grosso do Sul, on February 22, 1940.
Daughter of Armenian immigrants, she fell in love with the theater and decided to become an actress when her older sisters took her to see a play by playwright Carlo Godoni when she was already living in São Paulo.
“I cried a lot. She was thrilled because it was what I wanted. It is very difficult for a 12-year-old child, even more so at that time, to want to be an actress and already realize that she was going to have a lot of difficulties”, said Aracy in a statement to Memória Globo.
She recalled that her father was against choosing to be an actress: “I started at a time when it wasn’t nice to do television or theater.”
At age 14, studying at Colégio Bandeirantes, in São Paulo, she attended a lecture by playwright Augusto Boal, who invited her to audition for Teatro Paulista do Estudante. She passed and her first job was the play “Almanjarra”.
At Memória Globo, she remembers reading a review by Décio de Almeida Prado and Sabado Magaldi: “They wrote a review that ended by saying: ‘Aracy Balabanian: save that name’ I get possessed.”
Upon finishing high school, she entered the University of São Paulo (USP) where she studied simultaneously at the School of Dramatic Art (EAD) and the Social Sciences course at the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences (FFLCH), which did not reach conclude.
Career in television and the passion for soap operas
After participating in some shows at Teatro Brasileiro de Comédia (TBC), she participated in an adaptation of the Greek tragedy by Sophocles, “Antígona”, in a teletheater on TV Tupi. There she began her television career, which lasted over 50 years and featured in over 30 soap operas.
The first was between late 1964 and early 1965, on TV Record: “Marcados pelo Amor”, written by Walther Negrão and Roberto Freire. In 1968, she made the soap opera “Antônio Maria”, in which she made a romantic couple with actor Sérgio Cardoso. She said that it was this role that made her father accept her career choice.
“I usually say that Brazil stopped at this soap opera and my father stopped at me”, he told Memória Globo. His debut on TV Globo, where he worked until the end of his life, was in 1972, in the seven o’clock soap opera in black and white “O Primeiro Amor”, shown between January and October of that year.
In 1973, Gabriela lived and acted with the dolls characters from the children’s “Vila Sésamo”.
“Twenty years later, I started to see girls and boys calling me ‘my Xuxa’. It is very gratifying to know that there are children who have learned to speak by singing the song from Vila Sésamo”, he told Memória Globo.
There were countless soap operas and other productions throughout the 1970s and 1980s, but it was in the 1990s that he experienced his greatest successes.
“Scrap Queen”
In 1990, Aracy Balabanian won the role of “Dona Armenia” from the writer Silvio de Abreu in “Rainha da Sucata” – a plot whose main theme was “the opposition between the new rich and the decadent São Paulo elite”.
The character, with reference to the actress’ own ancestry, was a grumpy Armenian who had lived in Brazil for many years and was an overprotective mother of children Gera, Gino and Gerson.
She ends up becoming the owner of the land where the company of the protagonist Maria do Carmo (actress Regina Duarte) is located, who became rich with her father’s junkyard business.
Upon deciding to demolish the building, Dona Armenia experienced a dialogue that marked Aracy’s career, when she promised to put the building “on the chon”.
“My mother was a very diligent woman, but we had a neighbor who spoke very loudly, who minded everyone’s business. So I did a little bit like this. The success of the character was crazy”, said Aracy to Memória Globo.
The character was so successful that Silvio de Abreu brought Dona Armenia and her children back in the soap opera “Deus Nos Acuda”, in 1992.
“Leave Down”
In 1996, she had another of her biggest hits as Cassandra, one of the residents on the 6th floor of a residential building in downtown São Paulo overlooking Largo do Arouche, in “Sai de Baixo”.
With Miguel Falabella, Marisa Orth, Claudia Jimenez, Luis Gustavo and others, Aracy participated in the eight seasons of the successful TV Globo sitcom, which was recorded at Teatro Procópio Ferreira, in São Paulo.
The interaction with the audience, the actors getting out of character and funny mistakes that weren’t cut in editing became hallmarks of the series, which had more than 240 episodes.
Aracy’s character, Cassandra, was the mother of Magda (Marisa Orth), wife of Caco Antibes (Miguel Falabella), and moved in with the couple after her husband’s death.
“I found myself doing something every actor dreams of: theater and television at the same time. But it was a show rehearsed in one afternoon”, said Aracy to Memória Globo.
“Marisa Orth and I were the first to approach Daniel Filho and say: ‘It won’t work, take us out’. But I think we were getting shameless and we discovered that the public really liked to see us make mistakes. When that scare of ‘we can’t go wrong’ passed, we had a lot of fun”, he added.
“Da Cor do Pecado”, “Passione”, “Saramandaia”, “Sol Nascente” and more: Aracy continued to participate in TV Globo productions until the last years of her life. His last appearance was in the year-end special, in 2019, “Together with Magic Happens”.
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Source: CNN Brasil
I’m Robert Neff, a professional writer and editor. I specialize in the entertainment section, providing up-to-date coverage on the latest developments in film, television and music. My work has been featured on World Stock Market and other prominent publications.
