António Joaquim Fernandes (27 November 1951 – 15 September 2019), known as Roberto Leal, was a

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

singer, songwriter and actor. He sold more than 17 million albums, and received 30 golden records and 5 platinum records.Roberto Leal em mirandês
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Jornal de Notícias ''Jornal de Notícias (JN)'' (; meaning ''News Journal'' in English) is a Portuguese daily national newspaper, one of the oldest in Portugal. History and profile ''JN'' was founded in Porto and was first published on 21 June 1888. It was one of ...

'', September 24, 2007. Retrieved October 15, 2007.

Biography

Leal was born in

Macedo de Cavaleiros Macedo de Cavaleiros () is a city and List of municipalities of Portugal, municipality in northeastern Portugal, in Bragança District. The population in 2011 was 15,776, in an area of 699.14 km². History During antiquity, the region was oc ...

municipality,

Bragança District Bragança District ( pt, Distrito de Bragança ; mwl, Çtrito de Bergáncia) is a traditional political division of Portugal, in the northeast corner bordering on Spain (Castile and Leon and Galicia), covering 7.4% of the nation's continental l ...

, in northeast

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...

. In 1962 his family moved to Brazil. Roberto Leal wrote and produced most of his songs. Some of Leal's best known songs are: Bate o Pé, Clareou, O Vinho de Meu Amor, and Marrabenta. In 2007 and 2010 he released albums in both

and Mirandese. Leal had a dynamic vocal range and was a great dancer. Leal had a wife Márcia Lúcia and three children.

Illness and death

In January 2019, Leal stated he had been fighting cancer for the past two years and had lost part of his sight due to two

cataract A cataract is a cloudy area in the lens of the eye that leads to a decrease in vision. Cataracts often develop slowly and can affect one or both eyes. Symptoms may include faded colors, blurry or double vision, halos around light, trouble w ...

s. Roberto Leal died at age 67 on 15 September 2019 of kidney failure, following complications from an allergic reaction during his fight against cancer. He had been in hospital for five days in the semi-intensive unit of the Samaritano Hospital de São Paulo.

Discography

References

External links

Official website
1951 births 2019 deaths People from Bragança District 20th-century Brazilian male singers 20th-century Brazilian singers 21st-century Brazilian male singers 21st-century Brazilian singers Portuguese emigrants to Brazil People with acquired Brazilian citizenship Mirandese language Deaths from skin cancer {{Portugal-singer-stub