So that the excitements of A Favorita aren’t lost on the English speaking world, below is some information about the main characters (photos from left to right above):

Flora and Donatella

Eighteen years ago Donatella and Flora were (a) members of a country music double act and (b) lovers of Marcelo Fontini, who was brutally murdered by one of them. Flora was sent to prison for the murder, but for a long time it looked like she was innocent and really Donatella (who had become the adopted daughter of Marcelo´s rich family) was guilty. But now we know that it really was Flora all along, who is a psychopath much given to looking sad and crying and then turning to camera to give an evil sadistic grin.

The saddest moment for Donatella was when she went on the run on the streets of Sao Paulo, disguising herself only by covering her hair with a Dolce and Gabanna headscarf. She was soon caught and is now in prison, suffering in a Brazilian version of Prisoner Cell Block H.

Dodi

Dodi is a baddie. Once married to Donatella he is now in league with Flora. My friend Danilo has grown a beard based on that worn by Dodi.

Dodi’s chosen method for celebrating the success of his crimes is to hire a DJ and stage celebratory discos in his flat. Curiously whenever this happens, he doesn’t seem to invite anyone else and just dances around on his own in the middle of the living room.

Halley

Halley is a poor, muscle-bound boy who lives with his mother in a brothel in Sao Paulo*. Generally the acting is quite good in A Favorita, but for Halley emotions only really range from ‘sexy pouting’ to ‘sexy pouting but a bit sad’. In one particularly gripping scene he got locked in a sauna in a bizarre assassination attempt. Over several minutes we watched him sweat to (near) death wearing only a pair of small white pants.**.

*Actually this isn’t true: I know – because I pass some of each day reading soap opera magazines – that in forthcoming episodes, Halley will be revealed a the lost son of Donatella and heir to the Fontini family fortune.

** This scene is – of course – on youtube here

Minas Gerais – where I´ve spent nearly all the last three and a half months – is an inland state to the east of the middle of Brazil. It’s the size of France, a middling-to-large state in Brazilian terms. The south of the state sits between Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo and forms part of the densely populated, rich, central belt of Brazil. The name, ´general mines´, was given by the Portuguese when they found gold: mining’s still a big thing here, though mostly now its duller stuff like bauxite.

I have decided that Minas Gerais is Brazil’s answer to Yorkshire – not just because of the mining. Its cold* and hilly here, the people talk funny, and they eat curious home made fatty food. They have a reputation for being tight with money. And just as Yorkshire people don’t like London, Mineiros are continuously delighted at the way they don’t live in Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro. They like Minas Gerais.

England wouldn’t make any sense without Yorkshire (though you could, for instance, lop off East Anglia without anything changing much); in the same way Minas Gerais is central to Brazil. Mineiros are responsible for much of the history of Brazil, lots of the literature and art, and have also supplied a bunch of presidents and nearly presidents ( `nearly´ because one of them had a heart attack and died the night before taking office).

*comparatively – this is still Brazil

Some important things to know about Minas Gerais:

1) Gold and Art

The big thing that got Minas Gerais going was the gold and diamonds. Gold was discovered at the end of the seventeeenth century, the diamonds a bit later. With the money from the gold the locals went mad building baroque and rococco churches, filled with gilding and jewels. The churches and other 18th century buildings are the main attraction of southern Minas Gerais, and they are pretty impressive.

What´s great is that the artists and sculptors of the churches pretty quickly came up with their own Brazilian take on the whole religion business – Mestre Athaide, the most famous of the painters – used his very Brazilian looking mixed race wife as his model for the main portrait of the madonna in the main church, and also famously painted St John clutching bunches of sugar cane.

The pictures at the top – which i took- show various bits of art and architecture from the 18th century in the south of Minas.

2) The Incofidencia Mineira

The end of the eighteeth century saw one of the few vaguely organised attempts at revolution against colonialism in Brazil – the so called Incofidencia Mineira (`Minas Gerais unconfidence´, i suppose…) The plot was organised by a chatty dentist who told nearly everyone about his plans to overthrow the state.

Unsurprisingly the plotters were rumbled and the dentist was rapidly hung, drawn and quartered. This utterly disappointing attempt at rebellion hasn´t stopped the Inconfidencia becoming REALLY famous – all Brazilian children learn about it at school, and it´s vital to the image of Minas Gerais as the homeland of Brazilian nationalism and liberty. Because I´m fed up with Brazilians going on and on about it, I am eager to put on record that the Inconfidencia was rubbish and that even the gunpowder plot (hatched – let´s remember – just outside Rugby) was better.

3. Mineiro Characteristics
As well as being tight, Mineiros are reknowned for being chatty and cunning, inclined to cheat on their partners in either sex or politics. Having spent some time amidst the gay nightlife of Belo Horizonte (capital of Minas) I can confirm this is largely true. The key phrase here is “mineiro come quieto” which literally means Mineiros eat quietly, but “comer” in Brazilian portuguese usually means someting else….

4. North-South Divide
Minas Gerais is a bit like Brazil itsel – there are huge tracts of it that noone goes to and noone talks about. The interesting stuff and the money all happens in the south in state, while the northerners are ridiculed for generally being poor and a bit useless. Most of the north and west of the state consists of sertão – Brazils answer to the wild west. The sertão is dusty, dry and full of wrinkly men riding about on sad looking horses. They have their own equivalent to country and western music in which they sing about how they came to the city, realised that the sertão was nicer, and came back only to find out that their girlfriend had run off with another man.

• I went camping in the east of the state of Minas Gerais. I travelled on one of Brazil´s two functioning railways which follows a spectular route along the River Doce (left).
• There wasnt alot to do at the campsite and I struggled without a car. However, there were lots of interesting ants, and some nice leaves which I took pictures of.
• Danilo, his boyfriend Hugo and I went on an outing to Ouro Preto, the most historic town in Minas Gerais. There was a dual objective: Danilo was involved in the launch of a new guide book his company had designed, and it was also Ouro Preto´s first gay pride parade. In honour of the event the community centre had been converted into a gay nighclub complete with ´dark room´. Ouro Preto consists of ornate 18th century squares and 12 baroque churches, so the experience at midnight of stumbling around the cobbled streets with a load of drunk homosexuals was slightly odd.
• I have started my Portuguese lessons at the ´Nani´ language school, which are going well.
• I am going to the gym and swimming. Its quite good and the instructors are very helpful. However, they´re trying to teach me to swim in Portuguese, and i am finding that trying to understand their instructions,  follow their instructions and not drown at the same time is somewhat beyond me.

• Jesuits ran all the schools in Brazil from the 15th to the mid 18th century, at which point they were kicked out by the Portuguese colonial government who thought the priests were getting too powerful. Jesuit education was carried out in the Lingua Geral (general language) – a standardised form of the American Indian Tupi language which was also therefore the day-to-day language of most people in the country. It’s weird to think that if the Jesuits and the Portuguese government hadn’t fallen out, Braziians would be speaking Tupi today instead of Portuguese.
• Diamonds were discovered in 1726 in the middle of the state of Minas Gerais (where I am) in the town of Tijuca. It was more a question of realising than discovering though: long before 1726 Tijuca residents were finding shiny see-through stones in the street, and principally using them to keep score in card games. This may be an insight into the Brazilian psyche.
• In 1808 Napoleon invaded Portugal and the British helped the Portuguese court to escape to Brazil, where the King and Queen set up home to wait out the problems in Europe. I’d known about this for ages, buts what I’ve just found out in my new history book is the sheer scale of the operation: the British evacaution took 15,000 royals and major and minor nobles to Brazil. They took half the money in circulation in Portugal with them.

Before becoming president Juscelino Kubitschek (who as far as I can tell was one of Brazilian politics´ few undisputed good guys) was mayor of Belo Horizonte and was already working with Niemeyer. Beo Horizonte therefore has the largest collection of Niemeyer´s buildings from the 1940s and 1950s.

The most famous of these is the Church of St Francis (above right), a collaboration with with Brazils most famous artist – Portinari, who did the (traditional blue portuguese) tiles. The building was finished in 1943 but unfortunately the Catholic Church didn’t like the fact that Portinari had portrayed sinners sinning in his tiles and they didn’t agree to consecrate it until the late 50s.

The residential building just called ´Edificio Niemeyer´ is not so important, but its nice to look at, and is one of the main symbols of Belo Horizonte. I took the pictures above yesterday, while wandering up and down before my first Portuguese lesson (which I missed, having got a bit mixed up with the 24hour clock and the difference between 16 and 17 in Portuguese).

Unfortunately Danilo (who is the type of flashy queen who would contemplateplate moving to a modernist masterpeice in the centre of the city) tells me that the Edifico Niemeyer is quite tricky to live in as the rooms aren´t that big and all the walls are curved.

Use the + and – buttons to zoom in and out, and switch to sattelite view to see the overhead view…

(top Left) This is the astonishingly steep road leading up to the apartment block. Belo Horizonte is very hilly.

(top Right) Danilo is quite tidy.