Archive for the ‘ Debuts ’ Category

2002, August 29 – PREMIERE OF “FRIDA”

“I penetrate the sex of the whole earth…its heat embraces me and in my body everything feels like the freshness of tender leaves …it’s dew is the sweat of an always new lover …it is not love, nor affection, it is the whole of life”…thus wrote Frida Kahlo in her diary during recovery from one of her numerous surgerys and three heart breaking miscarriages…at age 18 the bus she was riding collided with a trolley and a piece of metal entered her pelvis and exited at her vagina; her back was broken in three places…miraculously she survived and she poured her pain and disappointment into her paintings…in the latter part of her life the suffering increased; first her foot was amputated and then her leg and then numerous operations on her back, courageously she wrote, “feet, what do I need them for when I have wings”…but bedridden for a year she was deeply depressed and contemplated suicide but she stayed on for Diego Rivera who needed her maternal sustenance …she knew she was dying and wrote, “I hope to exit with joy and to never come back”…she was fascinating and seductive and enchanted the likes of Picasso and Andre Breton…

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She seduced Leon Trotsky who had sought asylum in Mexico; shortly after he was murdered by Stalin’s agents…it was not entirely clear that she and Diego had not been involved in the assassination…Diego had told her that he was a womanizer when they married and she accepted it; she had her own affairs with both men and women…but when she discovered the affair with her own sister, it was more than she could handle….they divorced and she turned to alcohol…eventually they both realized that they irrevocably bonded and remarried…interestingly, both Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera were descendants of jews; she on her father’s side from Hungarian Jews who had immigrated to Germany and then Mexico…Diego was the descendant of Spanish nobility which had been “marranos”; jews who had pretended to convert to Catholicism…Salma Hayek, who played Frida in the film, believed passionately in the project and struggles for eight years to have it produced…it also starred Mia Maestro who had starred in Carlos Sauras “Tango” in 1998, Antonio Banderas and  Alfred Molina as Diego Rivera…the film, which was nominated for six oscars, includes a very sensual scene where Frida dances a tango with another woman

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2011
08/29
CATEGORY
Debuts
Films
Jewish
Tango In Film
2 comments

1976, August 27 – PREMIERE, “EL TANGO CUENTA SU HISTORIA”"

Young Fernando Ayala dreamed of an influential career as a lawyer and pursued his studies with determination…one day, a friend of renown writer and director Luis Cesar Amadori, invited him to the set of a new film “La Mentirosa” starring renown actress Nini Marshal; it was to change his life…he would recall years later how much he laughed at  the last scene where Nini’s character says “may the pictures fall off the walls, if I tell another lie” and how all the pictures came crashing down…it was at that moment that he decided to devote his life to film making…he began working as a runner in the studio and later became the assistant to renown director Francisco Mujica…

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His 10 years with Mujica including experience in Cuba and Mexico earned him a glowing reputation…his first film, a short, “Ayer Fue Primavera” (yesterday was spring) was a critical success…in 1956 along with Hector Olivera, he created Aries Studios…their first film “El Jefe” was a resounding success…in his career, he would direct over 40 films and produce another 20…in “El Canto Cuenta Su Historia” he featured  some of tangos great legends including Alberto Castillo, Roberto Goyeneche, Hugo Del Carril, Enrique Cadicamo and Julio De Caro…it was the first film for Amelia Baltar who was discovered by Astor Piazzolla and who besides becoming his lover would premier his masterpiece “Ballada Para Un Loco”

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2011
08/27
CATEGORY
Argentinean
Composers
Debuts
Films
Male
Orchestras
Singers
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1926, August 23 – VALENTINO DEAD AT 31 !!!

Valentino did not like doctors and although his dear friend June Mathis urged him to see one for the stomach pains that ocassionally gripped him, he refused; “it’s your bad American food” he like to kid….on August 15, 1926 while staying at the Embassador Hotel in New York, as part of a promotional tour for his new film “Son Of Sheik”, he was suddenly seized by a high fever, vomiting and severe abdominal pains….he was rushed to the “Polyclinic Hospital” where he was operated on for a perforated ulcer…in recovery everything seem to be going well and in fact in a press conference, doctors gave a sunny prognosis…however, on the fifth day Valentino was suddenly seized with severe stabbing pain in the chest…doctors soon realized that a severe  infection had spread to the lungs and that he would not recover….as was the custom at the time, the knowledge of his impending death was withheld from him…speaking in gasps, he even said that he could no longer feel the incision which unfortunately was a symptom of the advance state of infection…in his frequent telegrams to Paris, to Natasha Rambova whom he had divorced the year earlier, he spoke of plans for the future and their reconciliation…a few hours later he had slipped into a coma  and died…

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What had been the cause of his perforated ulcer which interestingly had also taken the lives of James Joyce and Rudyard Kipling…one possible answer was the fact that he smoked two packs of cigaretts per day; another one might have been the boxing match he had engaged in a few days earlier to assert his manhood after the Chicago Tribune, in a famous article, suggested that he was gay…apparently sugery was delayed for a few hours as surgeons were paralyzed by his celebrity status…outside, the police had cirlced the hospital to contain the throngs of women who had come to be near Valentino…that delay of a few hours may have worsen the infection to the point of no hope…his death plunged America into a nation of mourners…women wept with unashamed tears; two killed themselves that day…at his funeral services in New York, an estimated crowd of 100,000 gathered outside…when his body was brought back to Hollywood, thousands of fans stood in railroad stations across the country just to see the train as it sped past…in Los Angeles, an estimated 80,000 mourners crowded in and around the cemetery grounds…five years earlier Valentino’s performance in “The Four Horsemen and the Apocalypese” had been a major reason for the world-wide tango boom

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2011
08/23
CATEGORY
Dancers
Debuts
Films
Male Dancers
Tango In Film
1 comment

1935, August 15 – PREMIERE, “EL CABALLO DEL PUEBLO”

“El Caballo Del Pueblo” was directed by Manuel Romero…he was not a nice person, he had a terrible temper and was difficult to work for….he tended to work frenetically, writing as he went along and finishing a film as soon as possible; perhaps he was motivated by his considerable gambling debts…he was immensely prodigious in his career; he was to make 53 films…he relied on the same formula, simple, heart-wrenching scripts complete with the poor boy in love with a rich girl who is being pursued by the cavalier son of the local tycoon all of it contrasted by a good dose of comedy and lots of tangos; the critics hated it, the people loved it…renown Argentine actor, Pedro Quartucci, who stars in this film was the protagonist of a fascinating story; as a young actor he had a relationship with an aspiring actress Eva Duarte the future wife of Juan Peron,”Evita” with whom he supposedly had a daughter “Nilda”…the little girl however was brought up as their natural daughter by himself and his wife Felisa Borborino…

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Years later Nilda, now grown up and married, heard from her husband that her real mother had been Eva Peron…when she confronted her father, he admitted that it was true and her mother Felisa, at the eleventh hour, confirmed the story as well…Father Benitez, the priest present at the deathbed of Evita wrote that in her confession she spoke of “the great pain in her life” and he hinted that it was the fact of never having known a child born to her…besides this Pedro was a professional boxer before he became an actor…competing as a feather weight, he won a bronze metal in the 1924 Olympics…Carlos Gardel was originally scheduled to star in the film when Juan Carlos Thorry was hired as his replacement…it was his first film; the year after he would appear in Romero’s highly successful film Radio Bar…in his career he would star in over 60 films and direct four…Juan Carlos Thorry was not only a  singer and actor but a lyricist and composer of some popular tangos…early in his career he sang for the Osvaldo Fresedo Orchestra and later worked as a presenter on radio including Radio Belgrano and Radio El Mundo

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2011
08/15
CATEGORY
Argentinean
Composers
Debuts
Films
Male
Singers
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1939, August 11 – PUGLIESE DEBUTS AT CAFE NACIONAL

The mythical “Cafe Nacional”, the cathedral of tango, until 1916 was known as “Cafe LLoveras” where famed Argentine chess master Maximo Abramhson held court…it is here that Osvaldo Pugliese debuted with singer Amadeo Mandarino, his first orchestra on August 11, 1939…because of his communist sympathies, he was persecuted by the Juan Peron regime…during his periodic incarcerations his orchestra would continue performing but would place a red rose on top of his unmanned piano…He was born in the neighborhood of Villa Crespo, Buenos Aires, a traditionally jewish neighborhood, to an Italian immigrant father who was a shoe repairman but who loved music…it was he who gave young Osvaldo his  first violin lesson; Osvaldo would later switch to piano..at the age of 16 he was hired by Paquita Bernardo, the first professional female bandoneonist in Argentina, to play in her sextet…

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Osvaldso Pugliese was a highly principled man with a strong sense of social justice…among his activities, he was an organizer of workers’ strikes and even looked after the welfare of the terribly exploited prostitutes…he set up his orchestra as a cooperative in which everyone including himself was paid the same amount of money…there were numerous great hits among his hundreds of recording but perhaps non greater than “Recuerdo” which he composed  at the age of 19…during one of his numerous world tours at a stopover in Japan, he had a conversation with Dr. Daisaku Ikeda, a renown Buddhist who said of Osvaldo “I have met with emperors, kings, philosophers, great personalities from around the world, but I never found as much spiritual affinity with such a person as with Osvaldo.”

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2011
08/11
CATEGORY
Debuts
Jewish
Orchestras
Recordings
Villa Crespo
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1934, August 10 – NEW YORK PREMIERE, “CUESTA ABAJO”

Carlos, a student,  is a nice young man with a bright future ahead and promised to his sweet girlfriend Rosita but he becomes enchanted by Raquel who leads him to an immoral life…Carlos follows her to a port somewhere in the United States where he earns money dancing…he discovers that Raquel is supporting another man with the money that he gives her…“Cuesta Abajo” was based on a play by Countess Emilia Pardo Bazan, an early pioneer of women’s rights, whose copious writings in mid 19th century Spain explored ironic misfortune in human life…when one of her novels created a scandal, she chose to leave her husband rather than stop writing as he had commanded her to do…the success of the premiere of Cuesta Abajo at  the Campoamore Theater in Harlem moved Carlos Gardel to say “que fenomeno, viejo, que fenomeno!”…

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While 1500 people were crammed inside the theater, thousands more were waiting outside where they could hear Gardel sing through loud speakers…police authorities, still reeling from America’s first race riot which had occurred in Harlem just a few months earlier, even called the fire fighters to help control the crowd and Carlos Gardel had to leave early through a back door under police escourt…Harlem was then the home of New York’s growing hispanic immigrant community…the role of femme fatale “Raquel” was given to Mona Maris a hollywood actress who like Gardel was a love child…in her long career, her name would appear alongside those of Humphry Bogart and Cary Grant…Gardel himself interviewed her for the part and it was even rumored that they had been lovers….towards the end of her life, in an interview she said, “we were both strongly drawn to each other and if he had lived in New York we would probably have become lovers”…it was Gardel’s first American film and the most successful Spanish language film up until that time

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2011
08/11
CATEGORY
Argentinean
Composers
Debuts
Films
Male
Singers
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1924, August 8 – PREMIERE OF “ALLA TANGO MILONGA”

He had been a rising star in the cultural world of the 1920s and inspite of having served his country in the first world war and having been wounded on the Russian front twice, he now found himself blacklisted, struggling to survive solely because he was jewish….his friends tried to warn him, “Erwin, get out now, leave while you can!”…but he delayed, it was difficult to leave his beloved Prague…..the day arrived that the Soviet Union finally granted him citizenship and he prepared to move with his son and wife to the safety that it afforded…in the summer of 1941, the unexpected happened,  Hitler in an operation called “Barbarosa” invaded the Soviet Union in his blitzkrieg assault…the next day Erwin was ordered to the police station…in the winter of that year he was deported to the Wulzburg Concentration Camp where a sympathetic camp commander spared him the exhausting field work but he soon died of tuberculosis; he was 48 years old…Erwin Schulhoff was born in Prague of German Jewish origen…in his youth he studied composition and piano at Prague, Vienna, Leipzig and Cologne where his teachers included Claude Debussy…

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He would become a celebrated pianist performing throughout Europe including at the renown Osvobozene Divadlo in Praque which was part of the avant-guarde theater movement…among the theater’s influences were the ideas of F T Marinetti author of the famous manifesto “Down With Tango”…..after the war, like so many young people, symbolized by T. S. Eliot’s “Wasteland” - “April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain - he was deeply disillusioned, lost and depressed and like many, he found his inspiration in the Russian revolution of 1917…he was one of Europe’s first classical music composers to find inspiration in tango and jazz…his music was so much him, that he continued to compose even in the concentration camp and at the Russian front; in fact he published his first composition immediately after the war…”Alla Milonga Tango” was the 4th composition of “Five Pieces For String Quartet” which premiered at the International Society for New Music Festival in Salzburg on August 8, 1924…another “tango milonga” the mythical Suicide Tango would be composed four years later by Jerzy Petersburski and would have a macabre fate

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2011
08/08
CATEGORY
Composers
Debuts
Jewish
Pianist
Recordings
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1928, August 2 – RELEASE OF “THE GALLOPING GAUCHO”

Mickey and Minnie Mouse first meet in “The Galloping Gaucho” and a tango dance binds them for all eternity…In this animated film Mickey Mouse appears riding a rhea, an ostrich like bird, and he soon arrives at a bar called “Cantino Argentino”…already there, is the wanted outlaw, the dastardly “Black Pete”..Minnie Mouse, the house dancer, is there and she and Mickey dances a passionate tango together…in a sudden act of bravado, Black Pete kidnaps Minnie and escapes on his horse…Mickey gives chase on his rhea and finally catches up to Black Pete…a dramatic duel ensues from which Mickey emerges victorious and in the final scene he is seen riding away with Minnie into the horizon….this was the second short film featuring Mickey Mouse following “Plane Crazy” but it was not very successful; the sound version five months later did much better…the voice for Mickey was provided by Walt Disney himself and the animation was done by Ub Iwerks…

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In 1932 Disney would receive a special Academy Award for his creation of Mickey Mouse…he would go on to receive three other honorary Academy Awards and win twenty-two other Academy Awards from a total of fifty-nine nominations, including a record four in one year…Walt Disney would receive more nominations and awards than any other individual in history…”The Galloping Gaucho” was a parody of the Douglas Fairbanks film “The Gaucho” which undoubtedly was inspired in part by the mega hit six years earlier, “The Four Horsemen and The Apocalypse”…the tragic and untimely death of Rodolfo Valentino the previous year was still vivid in the mind of his adoring fans…released in 1927, “The Gaucho” was the first film for the fiery, sexual, temperamental Lupe Velez…in the film version Lupe Velez dances a passionate tango with Douglas Fairbanks whose use of the bolo give hints of S&M

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2011
08/02
CATEGORY
Debuts
Films
Tango In Film
1 comment

1914, July 11 – BIRTH OF ANIBAL TROILO

Leader, Bandoneonist, Composer (Cancer)…He sacrificed his life to his art and there were many regrets…one of those was never having had any children…his beloved wife Ida was eternally devoted to him although he belonged more to the nights and the glasses of whiskey…Horacio Ferrer called him, ” a man of true class and elegance”…but above all he was a gifted musician even though no one in his family was musical…his father was a butcher who died when Anibal was only eight years old; he was brought up with much sacrifice by his mother Felisa whom he never forgot…toward the end of his career, his body wracked by abuse, in an interview he said, “you know I never left my neighborhood, not really…I never really left my mother and I am always returning to her”...it was she who, with much sacrifice, bought him his first bandoneon; 140 pesos in 14 installments, he was ten years old…the poet Julian Centeya would one day call him “the best bandoneon player in Buenos Aires”…his first public performance was at the age of eleven in the Abasto Market at the Petit Colon Cinema…

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At the age of 14 he formed a quintet; at 16 he was part of the renown sextet of violinist Elvino Vardaro with Osvaldo Pugliese at the piano…later he would play with some of the greats, Juan Maglio “Pacho”, Juan D’arenzo and Angel D’agostino…toward the end of his life, he would recall 1937 with nostalgia; that was the year that he put together his own orchestra and the year that, in a night club, he met a shy hat girl, Ida Calachi whom he would marry and who would become his beloved partner for the rest of his life...the following year he made his first recording “Come Il Faut” by Eduardo Arolas …but Troilo, a master of pauses, was also an accomplished composer of some immortal hits like  ”Toda Mi Vida”, “Barrio de Tango”, “Garua”, “Sur”, “Romance del Barrio”,“La Ultima Curda”, “Mari…at the age of 18 he appeared in his first film “Los Tres Berretines”…others included the celebrated “Radio Bar” which premiered  in 1936 when he was part of the Elvino Vardaro orchestra…in the movie “El Tango Vuelve A Paris” which premiered in 1948  he has an acting roll…he died of cerebral hemorrhage and cardiac arrest at the Hospital Italiano with Ida at his side

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2011
07/11
CATEGORY
Abasto
Argentinean
Bandoneon
Cancer
Composers
Debuts
Films
Orchestras
19 comments

1919, July 10 – 14 YEAR OLD ELVINO VARDARO DEBUTS

The publicity read, “Violin Recital by Child Prodigy at The Argentina Saloon – Entrance Fee 2 Pesos”…for the first part of the program Mendelson, for the second, Bach and Tschikovsky…in fact his performance was a resounding success and a great future in the classical world was whispered about for young Elvino Vardaro but in time Elvino discovered that his true love was tango….to help support the family he began playing in the silent movie theaters always with a watchful eye toward the door for he was still underage…it is in this milieu that he met another underage musician, the future legend, Rodolfo Biaggi who was there without his parents conscent…it is there that the legendary Juan Maglio “Pacho walked into the theater and discovered both of them

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He was twenty fours years old when he formed “The Vardaro Pugliese Orchestra”; it was a dream come true…with great fanfare and promise and including a wide-eyed Anibal Troilo and Osvaldo Pugliese, the group debuted at the Cafe Nacional to an ecstatic reception…the dream however, was to turn into a nightmare when, embarking a long tour of Argentina, the lack of proper organization and management not only resulted in the curtailing of the tour and the dismemberment of the group…Elvino had to pawn his “Sartoris Bow” to be able to buy train fare back home…like Elvino, the protagonist in Bellinis “La Sonnambula” after whom his father named him who sings “all is lost, nothing can be done, my heart is dead to joy and love”, he went through a period of great despair but Elvino would not only survive but go on to have a diverse and exciting career as few tango musicians would ever have…tango historians often refer to “the Vardaro school” to describe musicians and events

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2011
07/10
CATEGORY
Composers
Debuts
Orchestras
Violinist
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