Ricardo Panela - Berlin im Licht: A Kurt Weill Songbook (2021)

With several awards and international premieres in his pockets, Ricardo Panela is an island singer who has been in London for several years and is now preparing to put his roots back in Portugal.

In January 2019, he gave a recital with pianist Nuno Vieira de Almeida at Teatro da Vista Alegre, organized by 23 Miles, which would give birth to a new project – the baritone's debut solo album, BERLIN IM LICHT, which will remain available from June 10th.

Co-financed by the GDA Foundation and with the support of colleagues and others, who, through a crowdfunding campaign, made its production possible, it is an album that concentrates a selection of songs by Kurt Weill, which Ricardo Panela claims to contain stories – “some more tragic, others more casual, but all of them deeply human.”

In this recital, which will be released by Artway Records, the Ilhavense baritone is accompanied by the pianist Nuno Vieira de Almeida, master of the chamber song repertoire, and also by singers Susana Gaspar and Alberto Sousa, invited for several songs. With recordings initially scheduled for the first half of 2020, the album, like so many other projects in times of pandemic, emerges from a process of immense flexibility and resilience, adding to Weill's stories the story of the musicians themselves and of humanity, as a whole, in moments of particular distress.

“The themes covered on the record are of such great human richness, in terms of the stories they tell, that we find there a portrait of Humanity during the 20th century”, says Ricardo, who hopes that BERLIN IM LICHT can reinforce it, through “a parade of characters”, the idea that “all forms of human existence are worthy of mention”.