Gilded Lily

by Isabel Vincent

  Perhaps Lily threw herself so diligently into the planning and execution of the wedding because she also had something to prove to her old friends in the city where tout le fashionable monde still whispered about the Monteverde family tragedy. Not that Mrs. Edmond Safra cared what anyone said in Rio, which in the spring of 1983 must have appeared to her a quaint provincial backwater compared to the places that she now called home. Now that she was an international socialite and beginning to become a well-regarded philanthropist with her important banker husband she had little time for old friends in Rio, many of whom were too afraid to approach her after she and Edmond became part of what one old friend respectfully called “the billionaires’ club.”

  Indeed, Lily now moved in more rarefied circles. The Safras lived between homes in London, New York, and Geneva, and they threw fabulous parties for their friends, who included the wealthiest Wall Street financiers as well as designers like Hubert de Givenchy, Valentino, and Karl Lagerfeld. They also made a splash with their philanthropy. A year after their marriage, Edmond, Lily, and their friend Nina Weiner, who was married to Edmond’s lawyer and Republic Bank chief Walter Weiner, founded the International Sephardic Education Foundation, which provided scholarships for needy Sephardic students to study at universities in Israel.

  Despite his annoyance with high-profile social affairs, Edmond must also have been in a celebratory frame of mind when he arrived in Rio for his beloved stepson’s wedding. Three months earlier, in January 1983, he had made a huge splash in international finance when he sold the Trade Development Bank to American Express. The deal, which saw him sell TDB for $520 million to the American company, still had a few snags in it. For one thing, tax issues prevented him from moving to the United States for a year to take up his new position as chairman and chief executive of the company’s International Banking Corporation. So until the following year, at least, Edmond would be able to remain happily anonymous, cooling his heels in Geneva, far away from the hordes of journalists who had announced the American Express purchase on the front pages of the world’s newspapers—a state of affairs that must have made the very private financier cringe with annoyance.

  But Lily paid little attention to American Express in 1983. All her efforts were focused on Claudio’s wedding. But if she thought she would dominate the event, she would meet her match in Adolfo Bloch, the Ukrainian Jewish immigrant who was the great-uncle of her future daughter-in-law. Bloch, who had turned a small graphic design business into a mighty media empire, insisted on holding the ceremony and the reception at his magnificent twelve-story company headquarters in Rio with its panoramic views of Sugarloaf Mountain and the Atlantic Ocean. Indeed, the building that housed Bloch Editores on the seafront Rua do Russel near the historic center of Rio was an architectural showpiece designed by modernist architect Oscar Niemeyer in 1968. Bloch, who had founded Manchete magazine in 1952 as a glossy, large-format, celebrity-studded weekly that took its inspiration from Paris Match, had been a faithful friend to a host of Brazilian leaders. He made sure that they received favorable attention in his magazines, and even provided a sumptuous office for Juscelino Kubitschek, the Brazilian president who presided over the building of the country’s futuristic capital Brasília when he was president from 1956 to 1961. When Kubitschek died in an automobile accident in 1976, Bloch insisted that the public viewing of the corpse be held at his cherished building.

  On the occasion of his niece’s wedding into the mighty Safra clan, Bloch was determined not to be outdone. Besides, he had another great cause to celebrate. He had just brokered a deal to add five television stations to his empire, and no doubt wanted to use his niece’s wedding to show the world what a scrappy immigrant could do. On top of that, he adored Edmond and Lily, which was one reason why he insisted upon paying for the wedding reception himself.

  In 1922, Bloch had arrived in Rio de Janeiro at the age of fourteen with his destitute parents who were escaping anti-Jewish pogroms in the Ukraine. Now, six decades later, he was dining with important politicians, European royalty, and celebrities. “For years, every ambassador who made his way to Brazil presented his credentials to the Brazilian president and to Adolfo Bloch,” said his widow, Ana Bentes Bloch, who had gone to school in Rio with Lily.

  On the penthouse floor of Bloch Editores with its stunning views of the ocean, Bloch had also entertained U.S. actor Jack Nicholson, feminist Betty Friedan, and Michael Jackson, who had recently visited Rio de Janeiro to promote his wildly successful “Beat It,” which had just topped the Billboard music charts. Moreover, few successful businessmen in status-obsessed social circles could boast that they had shared a cafezinho with the American astronaut Neil Armstrong shortly after his historic landing on the moon in 1969.

  There was no arguing with Bloch about the venue for his niece’s wedding. There was also no denying that the Bloch Editores building was a spectacular work of modernism. Bloch had spared no expense. The foyer leading to the auditorium where the wedding would take place was decorated with sculptures by Frans Krajcberg and paintings by such important Brazilian artists as Emiliano di Cavalcanti and Candido Portinari. The chairs in the twelfth-floor restaurant with its breathtaking views of Guanabara Bay were cut from rare jacaranda wood and designed by the country’s best furniture maker, Silvio Rodrigues; the round tabletops were made of the finest Carrara marble.

  In the battle to win control over who could organize the most memorable party, Lily set about to complete her own redecorating efforts. Upon inspection of Le Méridien, a five-star, thirty-seven-story seafront hotel next to Copacabana Beach that would accommodate her guests, Lily decided that some of the fixtures were shabby, some of the rooms too small. She happily agreed to pay for the upgrades needed on the hotel floors that the Safras rented for their out-of-town guests. Months before the wedding, a construction crew set about reconfiguring rooms at the Méridien for Lily’s wedding guests, most of whom would not stay beyond a few days. The night before the wedding, Lily hosted a lavish supper for her guests at Le Saint Honoré, Rio’s finest French restaurant, on the top floor of the Meridien, where the floor-to-ceiling windows offered tremendous views of the Atlantic Ocean and the twinkling lights of Copacabana below.

  Although she was eager to show off her grandiose efforts, she knew that Edmond would not appreciate too much publicity. Which is why she told Claudio to make “absolutely certain” that no one in the Brazilian press commented on her jewelry, particularly a rather large diamond ring that had been a present from Edmond. Claudio was extremely well connected in Brazilian media circles, largely because Edmond had installed him as the director of marketing for Ponto Frio, the company founded by Alfredo, his late stepfather. Although he duly informed one of his associates of his mother’s wishes, he was, as usual, annoyed by yet another one of her ludicrous requests.

  “I told her that if she didn’t want anyone to gossip about the ring, then she should just leave it at home!” said Claudio to his friend Guilherme Castello Branco, who worked in advertising in Rio.

  “I called every gossip columnist in the city and told them that under no circumstances were they to mention Lily Safra’s ring,” recalled Castello Branco, adding that he did not have to pay any of the journalists he contacted to do Claudio’s bidding because just about every media outlet received advertising from Ponto Frio. To go against the wishes of the son of Lily Safra would have been to sacrifice millions in advertising revenues.

  “Claudio was my friend, and he was a great guy, but he couldn’t stand his mother meddling in his life,” Castello Branco said. “He was really nervous when his mother came to visit because she wanted to control everything.”

  In fact, before his marriage to Evelyne, Lily did control everything. Claudio had been married to an Argentine dancer named Mimi. The marriage was short-lived because Lily was furious with his choice. “Lily didn’t think she was a good match for her son, and it was Lily, not Claudio, who ended the marriage,” Castello Branco said.

  Alth
ough Claudio divorced Mimi at his mother’s behest, he continued to support her financially for years, said Guilherme, who was charged with sending regular wire transfers of cash to Mimi, who went to live in Chile after the divorce.

  “Claudio was very solitary and very timid,” recalled Castello Branco. “It was difficult for him to find women because he always distrusted them. He never knew if they wanted him or his money.”

  According to other friends in Rio, Claudio was so awkward with women that when it came to sending flowers to Evelyne—the first time he had sent flowers to a woman in his life—he needed to consult an associate at Ponto Frio because he didn’t know how to go about it.

  Evelyne was neither beautiful nor royal, and her parents did not belong to the rarefied “billionaires’ club.” Before her marriage, she was a lanky brunette fond of parties and exercise classes. Like many well-to-do women in Rio, she had a personal trainer to help her with her daily exercise routine—a priority for many women in a city where their bodies are regularly exposed on the city’s beaches. Evelyne grew up in an upper-middle-class home in Rio de Janeiro with important family connections through her uncle. Still, “there was a distinct separation between Lily and the bride’s family,” recalled one observer. “Evelyne’s parents were not extravagant people, and at first they just didn’t know how to handle Lily. They were a quite normal Jewish family from Rio.”

  Lily had once been part of a similarly “normal” Jewish family from Rio, but that was years ago now, before she became an international jet-setter and shunned her past and stopped communicating with her old friends from the city. It’s not clear how Lily felt about her future daughter-in-law, but she whole-heartedly dove into the preparations for the wedding.

  Lily’s efforts paid off, and the event was considered a success. At the Bloch Editores building, the auditorium was filled to beyond capacity, with some guests standing in the aisles. The chuppah, or traditional Jewish wedding tent, was set up on stage, and the marriage took place under the auditorium’s spotlights. “An event like Rio has never seen and will never see again,” read the headline in O Globo, which devoted two entire broadsheet pages to the ceremony and the sumptuous reception where nine hundred guests dined haute kosher on imported smoked salmon, Norwegian salted cod, and Chilean sea bass. The Veuve Clicquot “was poured like water from a faucet” while the waiters and ushers were all flown in from the Plaza Athenée in Paris to take care of the guests, who included everyone from European and Pakistani royalty to politicians and Wall Street financiers.

  The guest list featured the usual Brazilian luminaries—socialites like Carmen Mayrink Veiga and Regina Marcondes Ferraz, the former caught wearing the same black-and-white Givenchy gown that she had worn to a previous society dinner in Rio. Roberto Marinho, the owner of the Globo media empire and one of Brazil’s richest men, was photographed wearing a white skullcap and tuxedo. The media baron and Brazilian kingmaker to generations of Brazilian politicians arrived late, and was forced to stand for much of the nearly two-hour ceremony conducted in Aramaic by three rabbis, including the chief rabbi of Paris and Rio’s Sephardic rabbi Abraham Anidjar, “the most Orthodox of rabbis,” noted one of the society columnists for Rio’s newspaper O Globo. In addition to the São Paulo branch of the Safra clan, who all attended the wedding, Roberto de Oliveira Campos, a leading Brazilian economist and one of Edmond’s best friends, was also one of the high profile guests, along with the Israeli consul general in Rio, a parade of federal ministers from the military government of the day, and the presidents of all the big Brazilian banks.

  But the far more impressive lineup was the group of guests with jet-set pedigrees—friends of Lily’s from haute society circles in New York and the French Riviera. Not to be outdone by Bloch, who insisted upon hosting the event, Lily chartered a jet to make sure that her own friends showed up. The Turkish-American record producer Ahmet Ertegun arrived from New York with his wife Mica, the interior designer, who wore the family rubies. New York society hostess Susan Gutfreund, a glamorous former Pan-Am stewardess, was photographed chatting with Italian-Brazilian businessman Ermelino Matarazzo. The wife of John Gutfreund, who was then CEO of Salomon Brothers Inc. and the most powerful man on Wall Street, must have been miffed that the Rio society columnist covering the event clearly had no idea who she was. In the caption underneath the photograph that shows her in a lacy-sleeved gown, her blonde hair in a discreet chignon, she is referred to as “Suzan Goodfriend,” which covered the pronunciation but not the spelling of her last name.

  The Gutfreunds were probably on a par with Lily when it came to unbridled extravagance. They thought nothing of renting an industrial crane to lift an enormous Christmas tree into their duplex apartment along the East River in the days shortly after their 1981 marriage, and before they moved to their massive sixteen-room apartment on Fifth Avenue. Years later, when they wanted to impress the Safras, they rented Blenheim Castle, the Churchill family’s ancestral home in Oxford, to throw a party for them and several hundred other invited guests.

  The statuesque Begum Aga Khan, the elderly widow of Aga Khan III and for decades a high-society fixture in the south of France, towered over Edmond in a photograph that appeared in O Globo’s society section a week after the wedding. Edmond, who was a few months away from celebrating his fifty-first birthday, is almost completely bald, and appears stiff and ill at ease posing for an unseen photographer in his tuxedo. Maybe the ostentation of the event proved a little bit too much for Edmond. He would probably have much preferred a smaller gathering of close friends and family.

  Lily would have none of it. The budding socialite, who was nearly forty-nine, looked resplendent, although extremely thin, in a cream-colored gown with a sheer back. Her blonde hair was discreetly pulled back into a conservative but very tasteful bun. Friends say she positively glowed when the cameras were pointed in her direction.

  “There were moments of great emotion, and such great luxury,” noted Perla Sigaud, one of O Globo’s society columnists, who attended the wedding.

  Even those used to the excesses of the Brazilian upper classes were impressed. “The wedding was truly spectacular,” recalled Ricardo Stambowsky, a leading wedding planner for Rio’s high society. “The entire theater in the Manchete building was turned into a huge synagogue. A bridge was built over the pool. People talked about that wedding for years afterwards.” And to make sure nobody forgot about the event, Bloch ordered his editors to devote eight pages of photographs to the ceremony and the reception in the next issue of Manchete.

  On stage, Claudio, who was just shy of his thirtieth birthday, stood stock still and somewhat ill at ease in front of so many important guests. In a newspaper photograph of the ceremony, Claudio is shown clasping his bride’s hand. The caption says he is surrounded by family, but curiously Edmond is the only family member who is visible in the photograph. Lily, who is standing at attention next to her husband, is obscured in the photograph by a white piece of paper from which the rabbi is reading.

  Switching from Aramaic to Portuguese towards the end of the ceremony, the rabbis blessed the bride and groom. “A couple with such good roots will quickly bear good fruit,” said the rabbi from Rio. Later, Claudio awkwardly moved to kiss the bride after removing her veil.

  The auditorium echoed with applause as the bejeweled and black-tied guests began to form themselves into a long line to wish the happy couple well. On the penthouse level of the Bloch Editores building, waiters polished crystal goblets, popped champagne corks, and readied hors d’oeuvres for the throngs of designer-clad luminaries who began to make their way up to the top floor. Dinner would be served later, in the restaurant, which was several floors below. In the wee hours of the morning, as the partygoers began to file into their chauffeur-driven black cars, they congratulated Adolfo Bloch and Lily Safra for putting on a great party.

  None of the revelers could have imagined that they would all meet again, hours later, to attend a funeral.

  THE WINDI
NG ROAD that circles the Pontifical Catholic University in Rio de Janeiro’s upscale Gavea neighborhood on a lush mountain overlooking the city is difficult to negotiate at the best of times—on a sunny day with almost no traffic. There are large yellow warning signs proclaiming “Dangerous Curve” in Portuguese, and most experienced drivers know to proceed with caution.

  Claudia Bloch Sigelmann, Evelyne’s twenty-two-year-old sister, must have rounded that curve in her tiny Fiat dozens of times as she made her way from Claudio’s sprawling house, where she frequently escaped with her boyfriend when no one was around to use the pool and smoke pot. On the night of Evelyne’s wedding, Claudia left the party at her uncle Oscar’s building in Gloria and drove with her boyfriend to Claudio’s house on the Gavea mountainside. Claudia’s boyfriend was so drunk that the bartenders at the wedding reception refused to serve him. At one point, the chef, Severino Dias, asked him to leave at once. Determined to have a few more drinks before heading to the Gavea house, Claudia and her boyfriend headed to the Hippopotamus bar. But they were eventually kicked out when the boyfriend became unruly.

  Once they arrived at Claudio’s home, they went for a moonlight dip and smoked a few joints. The drugs mixed with the alcohol that was already in her system from the party must have clouded Claudia’s judgment. The next thing she did was to get in the passenger seat of the Fiat with a man in the driver’s seat who was not only drunk, but now stoned. They were heading to an all-night club in Baixo Gavea, a bohemian neighborhood at the bottom of Gavea mountain that was a frequent haunt of university students and artists.

  In the pitch dark, Claudia’s boyfriend drove recklessly down the cobblestone streets that wound their way past the dense tropical vegetation with its bursts of colorful hibiscus flowers that hid the gated mansions and exclusive private schools nestled in the elite hillside neighborhood. By the time the driver could make out the myriad lights of the city down below, he was driving much too fast to negotiate the infamous curve that circled the university, which locals refer to by its acronym, PUC. Claudia may have tried to take the steering wheel when he lost control of the car. But it was too late. The Fiat crashed into a wall. Claudia was pronounced dead when the paramedics arrived. The boyfriend miraculously survived, with only a sprained ankle and a few scratches.