Cuba celebrates the centennial of its vedette Rosita Fornés

February 11, 2023

With a tribute gala titled la Fornés, forever, at the Martí theater, on February 11, at 8:30 pm, and February 12, at 5:00 pm. A moment to pay tribute to Cuba's unforgettable vedette in a show directed artistically by Alfonso Menéndez.

Today marks the centennial of the birth of Cuban vedette Rosita Fornés

Author: Pedro de la Hoz | pedro@granma.cu

February 10, 2023 17:02:19
Rosita Fornés was Cuban by nationality, culture, and sense of belonging. Photo: Alberto Borrego

"How can we speak of art in Cuba without mentioning Rosita Fornés? How can we recount the country's cultural life between the twentieth and twenty-first centuries without talking about Rosita Fornés? How can we be Cuban and contemporary if we do not contemplate in our imagination and collective memory the figure of Rosita Fornés? How can we say that we have a lyric art, a musical comedy, a vernacular theater, a dramatic theater, a national song, a cinema, a dazzling and universal cabaret and a unique and irreplaceable vedette without mentioning the glamorous and universal name of Rosita Fornés? How can we anthologize the most prominent figures of the twentieth century without including her name? Impossible."

To this conclusion, questioning and answering himself, poet Miguel Barnet arrived when celebrating, in 2018, the artist's 95th birthday. We could fully subscribe to such an apt observation on her centennial.

She had been born in New York on February 11, 1923, under the name of Rosalía Palet Bonavia. She had a cosmopolitan trajectory; the United States, Spain, and Mexico as natural territories, but she was Cuban by nationality, culture, and sense of belonging. Here, before, now, and always she will be Rosita Fornés.

With that stage name, on September 12, 1938, she won first prize in the amateur space La Corte Suprema del Arte, on the Havana radio station CMQ, by singing the milonga La hija de Juan Simón.

She had defined her vocation. She received classes from prestigious teachers: Mariano Meléndez (singing), Enriqueta Sierra (recitation), and Margarita Lecuona (ballet). The rest came through intuition, innate musicality, and daily practice on stage alongside directors and leading figures of the arts who transmitted experiences and knowledge to her.

On this she once said: "People would ask me if I had been taught how to move, how to walk on a stage. The truth is no, I did it spontaneously. But I always kept in mind what I was representing. I played tons of characters. Some moved one way and others another. But I insist: that was life for me. I loved my work, getting on stage was my best moment. And I always had the luck to do it in front of large audiences, always to a full house."

Contracted by her artistic mentor, the Spanish-born Antonio Palacios, who settled in Cuba, she made her theatrical debut in 1941, at the Principal de la Comedia, in the zarzuela El asombro de Damasco, by the Madrilenian Pablo Luna. That same year, the great composer Ernesto Lecuona took her to a lyric arts company he founded, in which she participated in La del manojo de rosas and Los gavilanes. From there she moved to Miguel de Grandy's troupe, to shine in Luisa Fernanda, La viuda alegre, Las Leandras, La verbena de la paloma, and La Duquesa de Bal Tabarin, among other zarzuelas and operettas. An unstoppable career for a young performer who at 21 years old received recognition from the Principal de la Comedia.

In 1945 she traveled to Mexico for the first time signed by the Azteca film studios. In Havana she had already debuted in cinema with Una aventura peligrosa, by Cuban industry pioneer Ramón Peón, in 1939, but Mexico represented an interesting opportunity.

There she acted and sang at the Lírico and the Tívoli, performed alongside Hugo del Carril, Libertad Lamarque, Toña la Negra, Pedro Vargas, and other figures of the era. In 1947 the Association of Journalists of the Mexican States proclaimed her First Vedette of Mexico, and in 1949, Associated Press of the Mexican States granted her the title of First Vedette of the Americas.

Married since 1948 to Mexican actor, artistic director, and impresario Manuel Medel, both formed a company three years later for performances in Mérida, and incorporated into their collective the notable Spanish lyric singers Pepita Embil and Plácido Domingo (father).

From theater to screen: La carne manda (1948, dir: Chano Urueta), Cara sucia (1949, dir: Carlos Orellana), Mujeres de teatro (1951, dir: René Cardona), Del can can al mambo (1951, dir: Chano Urueta), Piel canela (1953, Mexican-Spanish co-production, dir: Juan José Ortega), El mariachi desconocido o Tin Tan en La Habana (1953, Mexico, dir: Gilberto Martínez Solares), Hotel Tropical (1954, Cuban-Mexican co-production, dir: Juan. J. Ortega).

There lies the bulk of her film production, even greater than many years later, in 1983, in Cuba, when director Juan Carlos Tabío recovered her for cinema with Se permuta, which opened doors to new participations in Island films such as Plácido (1986), Papeles secundarios (1989), Quiéreme y verás (1994), Las noches de Constantinopla (2001), Al atardecer (2001), and Mejilla con mejilla (2011).

Her marriage with Medel failed, and in 1954 Rosita settled again in Cuba with their daughter, Rosa María Medel. The nascent Cuban television made space for her. In her first appearance on the small screen, in the show Gran Teatro Esso, on CMQ-TV with the operetta La casta Susana, under the musical direction of maestro Gonzalo Roig, the same as Cecilia Valdés, she met Armando Bianchi, her future husband, a valuable figure in entertainment, who died in 1981 in an accident on a beach east of Havana.

For decades in Cuba she starred in leading programs, while alternating in her career with active participation in variety shows, appearances at national and foreign festivals, and of course, the musical lyric stage. After the rebels entered the Cuban capital in January 1959—she learned of the event while touring Spain, so she advanced her return—she was counted among the founders of the National Lyric Theater.

She practically never stopped working, not even when she said goodbye to the zarzuela with the productions of Cecilia Valdés (1998) and María La O (1999). Her role in the theatrical piece Confesiones en el Barrio Chino, which Nicolás Dorr dedicated to her, was memorable.

On June 10, 2020, she closed her eyes. In bidding her farewell, many had the conviction of feeling la Fornés as a rose tattooed on the Cuban soul.