Micaela Rodríguez Cuesta was born in Seville, Andalusia, Spain on June 19, 1935. Known professionally as Mikaela she was a singer, musician (guitar) and film actress. From a very young age, Mikaela had shown a talent for dancing and singing, cheering her neighbors with her natural grace. She began to receive music theory, piano, guitar classes and soon entered the academies of Adelita Domingo and Eloísa Albéniz where she studied singing and Spanish classical ballet, showing signs of a keen personality that led her to participate in children's festivals and on the airwaves of Radio Sevilla.
Thanks to these first youthful experiences, in 1952 she appears on posters with the artistic name of Rocío del Carmen performing in different Seville nightclubs for more than half a year
During these early years of her career, Mikaela undertook long tours of Spanish theaters and in 1956 she recorded in Columbia what would be her first album with the name of Micaela del Carmen, which included the songs "Pérez de la Concha" and "Canción de feria".
She then worked on radio and was heard on Cabalgata fin de semana (Radio Madrid) where, thanks to the public's demand, she performed for thirty-two consecutive weeks performing songs by composers such as Francisco de Val, C. Murillo or Rafael de León. The legendary Chilean radio presenter Bobby Deglané was the one who succeeded in baptizing her with her definitive stage name: Mikaela with "K". Mikaela became a radio phenomenon, a medium that would serve as a springboard to the big screen. In “La pecadora” (1956), starring Carmen de Lirio and directed by Ignacio F. Iquino. A second opportunity came with a supporting role in “Esos tiempos del cuplé” (1958).
That same year, she was hired to travel to Mexico, and it was there that she took the lead role in two other films: the first “La vida de Agustín Lara” (1958) directed by Alejandro Galindo and the second “La llamada de la Muerte” (1960) under the direction of Antonio Orellana. On her return to Spain, Mikaela began shooting her first film as the protagonist, “La rosa roja” (The Red Rose) (1960), a film directed by the acclaimed Madrid director Carlos Serrano de Osma in which she demonstrates her most Andalusian side playing the famous character of La Parrala, an artist connected to the atmosphere of the singing cafés of the early twentieth century.
In 1966 she released one of his masterpieces on the Zafiro label: Mikaela interpreta García Lorca, an LP where she sang the popular songbook that Federico García Lorca had collected and harmonized in 1931. In the middle of the Franco dictatorship, it was not easy to record Lorca. Mikaela gathers, with the help of the heirs of the poet from Fuentevaqueros, the scores of the twelve songs that she finally managed to record together with the Madrid Symphony Orchestra under the direction and arrangements of Rafael Ibarbia. The result was applauded by intellectuals and art lovers who saw in Mikaela a unique artist, with personality, risky, brave and far from the official aesthetics.
During the 1980s, Mikaela retired from the stage to enjoy her personal and family life in private. Shee died prematurely in Madrid, on March 29, 1991, a victim of leukemia, after undergoing an autologous bone marrow transplant. Makaela is the mother of journalist, pianist Mikaela Vergara
Mikaela appeared in three Spaghetti westerns: “Gunfight at Red Sands” as Maria/Hélène Huertas; “Three Swords of Zorro” both in 1963 as Maria and as a cantina singer in 1972’s “Red Hot Zorro”
Mikaela sings “Gringo” in 1963’s “Gunfight at Red Sands”
MIKAELA (aka Rocío del Carmen, Micaela del
Carmen, Michaela, Mikaela Wood) (Micaela
Rodríguez Cuesta) [6/19/1935,
Seville, Andalusia, Spain – 3/29/1991, Madrid, Madrid, Spain (leukemia)] –
singer, musician (guitar) actress.
Gunfight at Red
Sands – 1963 [sings “Gringo”]
No comments:
Post a Comment