Leonardo Netto, businessman who was instrumental in managing Marisa Monte's career, dies

“Here in Brazil, she is Madonna”, compared businessman Leonardo Netto, in a 2007 interview, when referring to Marisa Monte, an artist whose career was managed by Léo Netto – or Leozinho, for those more intimate – since the beginning, in 1987, the year of the singer's appearance in a show that soon became cult among the public in the South Zone of the city of Rio de Janeiro (RJ).

More than a businessman, Leonardo Netto was a fundamental manager in building the star aura that surrounded Marisa Monte from the beginning of the singer's career.

If the singer-songwriter's talent proved to be exceptional from the beginning, the marketing – or anti-marketing – designed by Leo to promote Marisa in the media and raise expectations for each album or show by the artist was also equally exceptional and fruitful.

Born on June 28 of a year never revealed in the press, Leonardo Netto died yesterday, October 29, 2026, as a result of a long (and also never revealed) illness that affected the businessman and took him offstage in 2018, right at the beginning of the tour that brought together the group Tribalistas on stages in Brazil and abroad. Trio that Léo helped create in 2001, together with Marisa, Arnaldo Antunes and Carlinhos Brown.

In addition to having directed some of Marisa Monte's shows in partnership with the artist and Cláudio Torres, such as “Universo particular” (2006 / 2007) and “Verdade, uma illusion” (2012 / 2013), Léo was manager of the singers Adriana Calcanhotto, Cássia Eller (1962 – 2001) and Rita Lee (1947 – 2023), but Marisa was always the favorite, the priority, the apple of the businessman's eye due to the affinity that has always united them. One embraced the other's idea and, together, they seemed one.

However, it is fair to highlight that Leonardo Netto's career and contribution to Brazilian music began well before his connection with Marisa Monte. In 1976, Leonardo Netto was Nelson Motta's partner in the creation of the pioneering Rio nightclub Frenetic Dancin' Days, the stage where the irreverent female group Frenéticas was formed, a popular phenomenon in the second half of the 1970s.

Still in the 1970s, Léo began working in the marketing area of the then newly created Warner record company and, at the recording company, he soon became one of the pupils of the powerful boss André Midani (1932 – 2019).

Under Midani's leadership, Léo remodeled the image of Elis Regina (1945 – 1982) – a singer who had joined Warner after more than a decade at the Philips record label – and created the more feminine look adopted by Elis on the cover of the album “Elis, this woman”, released in 1979.

Later, between the end of 1981 and the beginning of 1982, it was Leonardo Netto who presented journalist Ezequiel Neves (1935 – 2010) with the demo tape recorded by the then fledgling group Barão Vermelho. There Ezequiel met (the voice of) Cazuza (1958 – 1990) – and the rest was another important story that had Leonardo Netto as one of the characters.