Mônica Salmaso, lady singer, plays Elizeth Cardoso with the rigor and class of... Elizeth Cardoso

Mônica Salmaso releases the album 'Senhora das songs – A tribute to Elizeth' this Friday, August 14th, with 16 songs from the almost homonymous show Disclosure ? FIRST PERSON OF THE SINGULAR ? I admire singers who venture into repertoires already renowned by other singers, especially when the original interpreter of the songs is someone of the caliber of Elizeth Cardoso (July 16, 1920 – May 7, 1990), one of the greatest singers of Brazilian music of all time. You have to have courage because Elizeth was a reference for tuning, vocal delivery, class and stylistic rigor in Brazilian music. It turns out that the person who sings the repertoire of this immortal singer from Rio in “Senhora das songs – Um tribute to Elizeth” – an album available on audio apps from today, August 14th, and already scheduled to be released on CD by the record label Biscoito Fino – is another lady singer, Mônica Salmaso, owner of the same class and the same rigor as Divina, the epithet by which Elizeth Cardoso was known. On the scene since 1989 and currently 55 years old, this São Paulo-born thrush is also one of Brazil's greatest singers of all time. A singer of the caliber of Nana Caymmi (1941 – 2025), for example, and it is worth remembering that Nana loved Salmaso’s singing. Had she emerged in the 1960s or 1970s, decades of the heyday of music labeled as MPB, Salmaso would have been elevated to the same level as the great singers of the time in terms of popular recognition and prestige. Still, analyzing the artist's career in perspective, I think that Mônica Salmaso has come very far for a singer who released her first album in 1995, a time when MPB had already been pushed aside in the market. Salmaso is one of the most complete translations of what is understood in 2026 by an MPB singer. There are no flirtations with the pop universe in the singer's discography. Salmaso is one of traditions. From the best traditions of Brazilian music. A singer who masterfully voices Guinga, who shares the stage with Chico Buarque without being in the singer's shadow – a feat that only Maria Bethânia had achieved in 1975 – and who seems to sing with ease even the most difficult songs in Elizeth's repertoire, such as “Carta de Poet” (Baden Powell and Paulo César Pinheiro, 1970), one of the 16 songs on the album recorded in the studio by Salmaso with the musicians Aquiles Moraes (trumpet and flugelhorn), Luciana Rabello (cavaquinho), Magno Júlio (percussion), Marcus Thadeu (percussion), Mauricio Carrilho (seven-string guitar), Paulo Aragão (guitar) and Teco Cardoso (flute and saxophone). I will not review the album because it is a (faithful) studio recording of the show “Senhora das songs – Uma homage to Elizeth Cardoso” (2020), already reviewed in the column when it was (re)presented in May 2025 in the “Terças no Ipanema” project, at Teatro Ipanema, in Rio de Janeiro (RJ). Still, I made a point of writing this first-person text about the singer to mark the release of the album because the release of a Mônica Salmaso album is always an event in Brazilian music – at least in the parallel universe in which Elizeth Cardoso is revered and in which a singer like Salmaso is applauded with the same intensity. And I think a salute to the record label Biscoito Fino, MPB's recording house, is in order here. I don't know if Mônica Salmaso would have been able to build such a rich discography outside of this company in which she debuted 22 years ago with the release of “Iaiá” (2004), a defining album in the singer's career that expanded the achievements of her predecessor “Voadeira” (1999). The album “Senhora das songs – A tribute to Elizeth” symbolizes yet another safe flight by Mônica Salmaso through the lyrical soul of Brazilian music with no expiration date. Cover of the album 'Lady of songs – A tribute to Elizeth', by Mônica Salmaso Graphic art by Ruth Freihof