Live recording of the show commemorating the six decades of Maria Bethânia's career in Brazilian music, the album “60 anos de career” was released yesterday, Friday, November 6th with 46 songs and texts linked into 38 tracks. The live recording was made at two presentations of the tour in the city of Rio de Janeiro (RJ), on January 17th and 18th, at Vivo Rio. The performance on the 18th was made with the public on the dance floor, enhancing the warmth of the audience.
“60 anos de career” is Maria Bethânia’s first album in five years, succeeding “Noturno” (2021) in the singer’s album discography. Bethânia has never gone so long without releasing an album since she began her recording career in 1965. With the artist's immediate lack of interest in recording a studio album, due to changes in the recording market, the tendency is for the singer's next releases to be separate singles.
If the album “Noturno” had a cover below the importance of the album, the album “60 anos de career” has a cover that matches Maria Bethânia’s history. The cover displays the painting “The descent of Corcovado or Ogum”, presented in 1972 by the São Paulo artist Flávio Império (1935 – 1985), scenographer of the artist's emblematic shows in the 1970s and 1980s. Although there is a feeling of déjà vu, as the work was used on the cover of the single “Vera Cruz” (2016), released in January, the cover of the album “60 anos career” is beautiful, expressive, dialogues with the show and tends to grow in the future and probable (but not yet confirmed) LP edition of the album. An LP that will need to be double or perhaps even triple to include all the content of the album, whose duration is 83 minutes.
If the LP edition is for now only a possibility, at an uncertain date or year, the edition of the album in the physical double CD format is a fact already confirmed by the record label Biscoito Fino. The CD edition is expected to be available for purchase on the label's website and in stores in 2026.
The recording of the show is warm, highlighting the mix of winds and percussions that characterize the warm sound of the show. Pedro Guedes and Thiago Gomes are responsible for the musical production. Bethânia's voice sounds extremely faithful to the singing heard on stage. If there were studio voice retouches, a recurring practice in the post-production of audiovisual recordings of shows, they were few and very subtle.
At the national debut of the tour in Rio de Janeiro (RJ), on September 6, the show “60 anos de career” presented five new songs in the itinerary. Four – the Bahian-style samba “Balangandã” (Paulo Dáfilin and Roque Ferreira, 2025), the song “Palavras de Rita” (Rita Lee and Roberto de Carvalho), the fado “Se não teve” (Pedro Abrunhosa) and the samba “Vera Cruz” (Xande de Pilares and Paulo César Pinheiro) – are perpetuated in the album, with the exception that the samba “Vera Cruz” was already recorded by Bethânia in the studio for a single released in 2016. Unfortunately, the fifth new song, “Eu mais ela”, composed by Chico César, fell out of the script throughout the tour and was not even sung on the two days of recording the show.
Until then, previously unreleased in the voice of Maria Bethânia, the song “Mares da Espanha” (1979) represented a gesture of love from the singer to Angela Ro Ro (1949 – 2025), composer of the song released on the author’s first album. Angela Ro Ro was hospitalized in serious condition when Bethânia premiered the show and died on September 8, two days after the tour debut. The singing of “Mares da Espanha” and “Gota de sangre” (1979) – another song from Ro Ro’s anthological debut album, but this one already recorded by Bethânia in the same year on the album “Mel” (1979) – then came to symbolize the singer’s posthumous tribute to the composer who gave her the song “Fogueira” (1983). Tributes aside, “Seas of Spain” was always one of the most intense moments of the “60 years of career” show.
Of everything that was presented by Bethânia in the recording of the show on January 17th and 18th, only the text “I don't want to have just visited this world”, credited to Dora Fischer Smith, was left out of the edition of the album “60 anos de career”. The text was said by the performer between the songs “A Força que Nunca Seca” (Chico César and Vanessa da Mata, 1999) and “Rosa dos Ventos” (1971).
"This album takes place in just one night. It took 60 years to be made. It's a party", poetizes Eucanaã Ferraz in the opening of "Ter o Coração Quero", a text in an act written by Eucanaã to present the album "60 anos de career" to the media and opinion makers.
