‘Alegria’, Cristina Branco’s 12th album, turns nine this month. The album, released in February 2013, brings together the words of Sérgio Godinho, Chico Buarque, Joni Mitchell, Manuela de Freitas, Pedro da Silva Martins, Jorge Palma, Miguel Farias and Gonçalo M. Tavares in a cry against the Portuguese social-political context of the time. In this decidedly protesting work, Cristina Branco plays a series of female characters in extreme situations and its epigraph is a quote from the Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector: “I want joy, melancholy kills me little by little”.