After her husband’s death in 1942, life becomes difficult in Porto Alegre. Adélia Fossati Gnattali, suffering from progressive and advanced deafness, moves to Rio de Janeiro with her children Alexandre, Aída, and Maria Terezinha. Maria, the youngest, dies early, in 1946, at the age of 20, of sepsis. Aída gets it off her chest: ‘Maria played very well. He studied piano all day and had talent. She was a student of mine in Porto Alegre, and later went to Tomás Terán, in Rio de Janeiro. He died so young, I have that stuck in my throat to this day. A shame, really. His mother Adélia died in 1954.