Hortensia Coalla Raveiro

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In a house that once stood where the Havana cinema Fausto was built several decades ago, the soprano was born, who in her time, according to Ernesto Lecuona, possessed "the most beautiful voice in Cuba" and Gonzalo Roig called "the best voice in Cuba".

The assertions of these two extraordinary masters of Creole music validate, in fact, the vocal faculty of la Coalla, one of the prominent figures in the entire history of national lyric art.

At the end of the twenties of the last century she declared to Germinal Barral (Don Galaor), journalist of the weekly Bohemia, that her debut took place at a concert held at the National Theater to pay homage to José Manuel de la Cuesta, then mayor of Havana, and she also cited Germán Araco as her singing teacher. She studied theory, solfege, harmony and violin.

This could be considered a debut as an amateur, because professionally it took place at the Regina Theater, in the Cuban capital, with the Company of impresario Pepito Gomís, in 1929, with the premiere of the zarzuela El batey, with libretto by the bard and playwright Gustavo Sánchez Galarraga and music by Lecuona.

A few months later, at the end of that year, the author of Canto Siboney decided to take her to his performances in the National Theaters of Panama and Costa Rica, respectively, in which la Coalla received her first ovations abroad.

Upon her return to Havana she became one of the essential figures in concerts and stage performances of the world-renowned Cuban composer and pianist and in artistic enterprises organized by other prestigious creators of our lyric art. Leading roles in La flor del sitio, El cafetal, El torrente, María la O, Rosa la China and Lola Cruz, all of them with scores by Lecuona, as well as Cecilia Valdés, La hija del sol and El clarín, by Roig, La Habana de noche, by Rodrigo Prats, and La emperatriz del Pilar, by Jorge Anckermann, among many others, found in this artist one of their most singular interpreters.

In 1940 Hortensia Coalla traveled to Buenos Aires with tenor Miguel de Grandy, singers Zoraida Marrero, Esther Borja and Mercedes Caraza (diva of the lyric seasons in Mexico), among other members of Lecuona's Company that performed in theaters in the Argentine capital. There she received numerous accolades due to her performance in Lecuonian works such as María la O and Lola Cruz and in her performances before the microphones of Radio El Mundo. Through these she not only sang pieces by Cuban composers, but also arias from her operatic repertoire, such as Tosca and Madama Butterfly, by Puccini, and Aida, by Verdi.

La Coalla's work in Cuba also included performances with the prestigious Symphonic and Philharmonic Orchestras of Havana, and her presence in the most important radio stations of her time: CMQ, RHC-Cadena Azul and COCO.

With the arrival of 1949 she retired from art following her marriage to Manolo Corton and the birth of her daughter. But in one and another sporadic performance she evoked the glorious days of her artistic career. It is worth noting in this regard her characterization of the character of África, from El cafetal, in the nineteen-fifties, in a Cuban television program shortly after this medium of communication was inaugurated on the Caribbean island.

Since 1959 Hortensia Coalla settled in the United States of America, where she gave some artistic performances in theaters and churches. In 1988, during a tribute paid to her in Miami, she brought the audience to its feet by singing, at 81 years of age, one of her favorite pieces: Desengaño, by Ernesto Lecuona.

Full of love for Cuban music, Hortensia passed away in that North American city in 2000. She could still emit wonderful high notes that recalled those that in her youth impressed audiences in Cuba and other parts of Latin America and led Ernesto Lecuona to assert, in a letter written by him in Buenos Aires, in 1940, that la Coalla was the possessor of an "incomparable voice, unmatched until now".