In 1930, the sound film came to Argentina. Many tango musicians were outraged: an important performance venue and source of income that had been available to them through the years of the silent movie was slipping from their hands. Yet, three years later the sound film took roots in Argentina, and the first one to be produced in the country was: Tango!
The film is not a masterpiece of cinematography. On the contrary: the plot is weak, the acting generally clumsy, and the dialogues are paltry. But there is the music! The producers of the film brought together some of the best tango musicians of the time. Among them are four outstanding female singers and actresses: Tita Merello, Azucena Maizani, Mercedes Simone, and Libertad Lamarque.
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Cartoons
from Caras y Caretas.
From
left to right: Tita Merello, Azucena Maizani, Mercedes Simone,
Libertad Lamarque
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Beginning
their careers in the 1920s, the four women became the superstars of
tango in the 1930s-40s. They were omnipresent in public life—to be
seen everywhere in magazines, on stage, and on screen; and to be
heard on record and on the radio.
1. Tita Merello
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| Tita Merello |
Tita
Merello (1904-2002) grew up in the poorest circumstances in Buenos
Aires. Never having visited a school, she only learned to read and
write when she started to make advances on the theater stage. She was
not formally trained as an actress or singer but quickly gained a
reputation as a first-rate performer. Her first appearance as a
singer, when she was still a teenager, turned out to be such a
complete flop that she vowed never to sing again. However, she
continued to sing tangos in plays which became so popular that they
were also released on records.
In
1932, a year before Tango! was shot, she celebrated a great
success appearing in La Muchachada del Centro, a musical
comedy with music by Francisco Canaro to a libretto by Ivo Pelay.
Canaro, who conducted the orchestra during the shows, remembered her
as being a demanding perfectionist during rehearsals. The play was
one of the great theatrical successes of the year, and performances
were discontinued only because Canaro had other commitments
In
Tango! , Merello plays the part of a girl from the suburban
tenement housings to whom the male 'hero' returns in the end—having
abandoned her to seek fame and fortune. The orchestra accompanying
her in the following clip is the Conjunto de la Guardia Vieja of
violinist Ernesto Ponzio and clarinetist Juan Carlos Bazán.
2. Azucena Maizani
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| Azucena Maizani |
“A
pretty young woman with very black hair frequently visited the
'Pigall'. As we were talking one night, she told me that she sang. It
occurred to me to ask her if she would not like to sing, after a few
rehearsals, in public. I would accompany her with my orchestra. She
graciously accepted, and after having rehearsed, we announced her to
the public. I presented her myself under the name of 'Azabache'
because of her black hair. She sang El rebenque planteado and
the milonga La Verdolaga, which she had learned by listening
to Carlitos Gardel. It does not need to be said that she had a
colossal success from the very beginning because she really sang well
and whith much feeling.”
This
is how Francisco Canaro described how his discovery of Azucena
Maizani (1902-1970). The sobriquet azabache
(gagate, jet-black) that Canaro had bestowed on her did not stick, but she quickly became
an enormously popular tango singer, one of the most recorded in the
1920s (incidentally, with the orchestra of Francisco Canaro).
Significantly, she appears at the very
beginning of Tango!, signing during the opening titles and
credits. She also appears as a tango singer in a dingy cabaret in the
suburbs of Buenos Aires. The
orquesta típica is
led by Juan de Dios Filiberto, who is also the composer of the tango
sung in the following excerpt. (Botines viejos,
text by Alberto Vaccarezza.)
3. Mercedes Simone
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| Mercedes Simone |
Mercedes
Simone (1904-1990) started her singing career at the side of her
husband, the guitarist Pablo Rodríguez. Singing at first only at weekends to increase the family income in small towns in the area of
her hometown, La Plata, she made her professional debut in 1926 in
Bahía Blanca.
Inadvertently,
Simone gave an important impulse to the popularization of the danced milonga. Rosita Quiroga had asked Homero Manzi to write a milonga for
her. Manzi asked Sebastián Piana for help, and the two composed
Milonga sentimental. However, Quiroga did not like the piece;
it was not the kind of milonga she expected and did not fit into her
repertoire. Piana asked Mercedes Simone if she would take a look at
it. She took it along on a concert tour to Montevideo and performed
it there with great success. Back in Buenos Aires, she was the first
to record it.
In
Tango!, Simone sings Milonga sentimental accompanied the
orquesta típica of Pedro Maffia. In 1934, Maffia performed
the piece again (this time with the singer Rosita Montemar) at a
well-publicized radio broadcast, after which Milonga sentimental
gained popularity with the general public.
In
the following excerpt of the film, Mercedes Simone sings her own
composition Cantando, accompanied by Pedro Maffia and his
orquesta típica.
4. Libertad Lamarque
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| Libertad Lamarque |
Libertad
Lamarque (1908-2000) knew the theater stage already as a child and
started to work professionally as an actress when she was twelve
years old. In 1926, she sang a tango the first time in a play and was
contracted in the following year by the Victor company to make
recordings. In 1931, she participated in a competition, La Fiesta
del Tango, in which she took first prize and thus was crowned the
“Queen of Tango”.
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Libertad
Lamarque during her performance of La Cumparsita at the Fiesta
del Tango. At the top, the orchestra of Francisco Canaro.
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In
the following excerpt of the film Libertad Lamarque appears as an
upper-class singer performing on an ocean liner, on which the male
'hero' has embarked on his way to Paris.
5. La Orquesta de Señoritas
Apart
from singers, only a few female tango musicians are known by name.
Nevertheless, orchestras consisting mostly or exclusively of women
where not that uncommon. They belonged to the kind of ensembles that
would perform in cafés, for example. The group playing the tango Pipiolo in the
following excerpt is, unfortunately, unidentified, but they certainly
knew how to play a tango.
© 2017 Wolfgang Freis
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