(For the American jazz singer, please see Maysa Leak.) Maysa Figueira Monjardim (June 6, 1936, São Paulo, Brazil - January 22, 1977, Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), better known as Maysa Matarazzo or simply Maysa, was a Brazilian singer, composer, and actress. She is also associated with Bossa nova music but is widely known as a torch song (fossa) interpreter. Maysa's grandfather was Alfeu Adolfo Monjardim de Andrade e Almeida, the 1st Baron of Monjardim, and wife Laurinda Luísa Pinto Pereira. Maysa showed talent at a young age and by twelve had written a samba song, which later became a hit from her first album. ...show more

(For the American jazz singer, please see Maysa Leak.) Maysa Figueira Monjardim (June 6, 1936, São Paulo, Brazil - January 22, 1977, Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), better known as Maysa Matarazzo or simply Maysa, was a Brazilian singer, composer, and actress. She is also associated with Bossa nova music but is widely known as a torch song (fossa) interpreter. Maysa's grandfather was Alfeu Adolfo Monjardim de Andrade e Almeida, the 1st Baron of Monjardim, and wife Laurinda Luísa Pinto Pereira. Maysa showed talent at a young age and by twelve had written a samba song, which later became a hit from her first album.

She married André Matarazzo Filho, a member of a wealthy and traditional São Paulo family in 1954 at the age of 18 and two years later had a son, Jayme Monjardim. Jayme would later be known as a television director. In the late 1950s she formed a successful bossa nova group and also did television work relying on her magnificent pair of gorgeous green eyes. Her tour to Buenos Aires first projected bossa nova beyond Brazil's borders but was not without controversy.

The tour was a great success and extended to Chile and Uruguay, but Maysa had an affair with the show's producer, Ronaldo Bôscoli, a journalist and composer linked romantically to bossa nova's muse Nara Leão. This led not only to a break between Nara and Ronaldo, but also to a fracture in the bossa nova movement. Nara supported Carlos Lyra's nationalist vertent of the bossa nova movement, to the detriment of Boscoli's more orthodox approach, emphasizing form rather than content in bossa nova compositions. Nara also began courting older composers of traditional sambas, such as morro composers Zé Kéti and Cartola. ...show less