Ana Aguado Andreu

Soprano. Cuban singer and patriot. Wife of musician Guillermo Tomás

She was born on Velasco Street No. 46 between Santa Clara and San Carlos, in the city of Cienfuegos, Cuba.

This Cuban singer and patriot began her primary and music studies at age 7 at the Rafaela González Mendosa School, in her native city. In 1878 she moved with her family to Coruña (Spain). There she continued her secondary studies at the Alfredo Totosaus School, and at the same time, studied singing with the priest and excellent Spanish singer Antonio Diez and piano with maestro Casa. In the great metropolis, Ana Aguado gave singing and music lessons with professor Emilio Agramonte.

After completing her musical and academic studies at seventeen years of age, Ana Aguado made her debut on December 27, 1883, performing a program of vocal works by Chopin and Robandi. With her beautiful and powerful dramatic soprano voice, she achieved her first artistic triumphs that earned her a contract as a professional at the exclusive Liceo Brigantino, in Coruña. From that moment on, she performed there countless times with equal success.

She returned to Cuba in 1885, settling once again in the city of Cienfuegos, where she performed in popular societies, El Artesano, Liceo Artístico y Literario, and in other venues in this city. In all these recitals Ana Aguado acquired considerable prestige for her faithful interpretations of the lyric theatrical works of Spanish composers Francisco Barbieri, Joaquín Gaztambido, Sebastián Güell, José Rogel, Romea and Valverdi, Enrique Campano, and of the Santiaguero Laureano Fuentes Matons, whose opera Seida she performed beginning in early 1889, with some success with the public and critics. In many of these presentations, the young singer performed alongside prestigious Cuban musicians who had settled in Cienfuegos after the Ten Years' War concluded, and subsequently to their great triumphs abroad. Among them are the composers and pianists Tomás D'Clouet (1820-1887), José Manuel Lico Jiménez (1851-1917), and the Sagüero flutist Ramón Solís (1854-1891).

One of the most significant facts in Ana's artistic career is counted as her performance on July 8, 1888, at the society El Artesano where she was accompanied at the piano by Lico Jiménez. Another important fact for the young artist was having met at one of those soirées in 1885, the young flutist Guillermo M. Tomás, who would later become her husband, and the man who would most influence her personal and professional life.

At the end of 1889, like many Cienfuegos families dissatisfied with Spanish regime politics, Ana Aguado and her closest relatives were forced to leave for the United States. Already in New York she reunites with Guillermo M. Tomás, who was waiting for her, exiled for the same revolutionary cause. A few months later (1890), they married, and settled in the Brooklyn neighborhood. In this city they integrated into the movement of revolutionary artists that existed among Cuban emigrants, led by the Camagüey pianist and singer Emilio Agramonte (1844-1918).

Supported by a vigorous group of excellent music enthusiasts and professionals. Like all those artists, Ana not only distinguished herself as a singer, but also as an effective organizer of patriotic musical soirées, held voluntarily in the various Cuban revolutionary clubs organized in New York City.

On July 7, 1890, she was invited by José Martí to participate in a periodic function for the benefit of the liberation war.

In 1893, Ana Aguado won in difficult competition the position of soprano soloist in the Music Chapel of the church of San Francisco Javier, in Brooklyn. At that time there existed in that place an excellent classical vocal quartet and a choir of thirty singers and an organist. The chapel was a gathering point for music enthusiasts of the era. By those years Ana was known by the nickname "La Calandria Cienfueguera" and had gained solid prestige for her recitals at the Cuban Political Club, Los Independientes and in the theaters Hardman, Columbus Hall, Berkeley Liceum, Brunswie Hall and at the School of Opera and Oratorio, founded by the Camagüey pianist and singer Emilio Agramonte (1844-1918), the latter, taking advantage of Ana's fame with the colony of Cuban emigrants in New York, organized a patriotic soirée on August 28, 1895 in order to raise funds to aid wounded Cuban soldiers in the campaign. This activity took place at the American Methodist Church. By the numerous public attendance and the funds raised, it was demonstrated once again the revolutionary fervor of Cubans in exile. Apart from Ana, there was also the participation of maestro Agramonte himself and Guillermo M. Tomás.

After the '95 war ended, on September 30, 1898, soprano Ana Aguado, her husband Tomás and their young son Eduardo, returned to Cuba. Despite the nine years of exile, with homesickness and sufferings endured in a foreign country, she could not hide the joy of returning to her homeland.

Settled in the City of Havana, Ana was appointed professor of singing at the National Music Conservatory of Hubert de Blank. She attempted to found a vocal institute (of short duration), and gave private singing lessons using the most modern methods of her time.

When her husband Guillermo M. Tomás (flutist, composer and director) organized the Municipal Band, the Municipal Academy of Music Dr. Juan R. O'Farril (attached to the band), in 1904 the Municipal Choir and in 1908 the Havana Symphony Orchestra, he found in Ana Aguado his closest and most effective collaborator. Precisely, in the first presentation of this last group founded by Tomás, held on December 26, 1908 at the National Theater (now Galería Lorca), the orchestra accompanied Ana Aguado in one of her last public performances. She was already in delicate health. The artist performed the scene and aria "Giunse al fin", from Mozart's opera "The Marriage of Figaro", Serenade by Schubert, "Mir sueßen don Augen" by Chopin and the scene and aria "Ah Perfido" by Beethoven.

From 1915 she was no longer in command of her voice and the terrible moment finally came in the early morning of May 6, 1921, when, leaving the most ineffable memory, she disappeared from this life, she who had triumphed as a woman, as an artist, as a mother and devoted wife and above all, as a patriot. That voice that once was so sweet and well-timbred, ceased to sound forever.

Martí, referring to her art, expressed to her in a famous letter: "To prepare oneself to die it is necessary first to hear the voice of a woman"

Source: Wikipedia