Carlos do Carmo - 50 Years

17 April, 2014 to 28 September, 2014

The CARLOS DO CARMO – 50 YEARS - exhibition, in Cordoaria Nacional, reviews the fifty years long artist's career, gathering a vast collection of different documents: fine arts, films, records, posters, medals and awards. 

The most important moments of Carlos do Carmo's career can be seen: family, first steps at the "Faia", first recordings, his relationship with his mother, also Fado singer Lucília do Carmo, and even his poetic and lyrics daring, and the world stages win over. 

For the exhibition concept, the use of multimedia resources was favoured, so that visitors can feel the older decade's aura: statements, recordings of the time, and even some unpublished material, part of the documentary on Carlos do Carmo, to be released by the end of the year.

A personality with a vast experience together with a flawless strictness for accuracy, and a renewed surprising capacity as to all the components he resorts to. Humour and tragedy, entertainment and a sense of destiny, popular lyrics and major literature, tradition along with experiment whenever called upon by the Fado, appear skilfully balanced in each of his interpretations. And, as fifty years went by, all musical and thematic forms which today meet the Fado are within his reach.

Vasco Graça Moura

His repertoire has evolved naturally over this half century, but the essential remained untouched. The supreme art with which Carlos has wisely recreated this inheritance that we call Fado, in a very much  his own alliance between the Fado's tradition in his veins and the countless contributions brought about by new poets and musicians, with a permanent spirit of innovation and discovery, not leaving aside the past, but on the contrary, transforming  and encapsulating it in an always more vivid present. 

Fernando Pinto do Amaral