On Tuesday, October 27, 1931, Carlos Gardel made a recording with Francisco Canaro. It was a very hot day and the study ventilation system did not work. They recorded soaked in sweat, so much that Carlos took off his clothes and stayed alone with the shoes and the glasses I needed to read the lyrics of the songs.
This scandalized the recording technician, of German origin, who shouted: “But, Mr. Gardel, what does this mean!” To which Carlitos replied: “This means, old not so muchthat the saint has happened to me that in Germany you were a good tangerine! ” (1)
The singer seemed not to fit with the Argentine customs of the 30s. The day after his famous recording in “Adam’s suit”, Gardel took the ship Conte Rosso to leave for Europe.
Many years later, poet Raúl González Tuñón remembered: “I met Gardel aboard the Conte Rosso At the end of 1931. I went to Brazil, as a correspondent for the old criticism, in the days of the Revolution of Getulio Vargas and Gardel returned to Paris.
Every night -the boat took 5 days to get to Rio -we met with Gardel at the Captain’s Camarote to drink some glasses. He sang to us songs in French and Italian. ” (2)
Gardel’s idea on this trip was to work in cinema and released his guitarists not before advising them: “This time they are not going to travel with me, but attenti, boys: avoid grabbing trip with any crysta because You, apart from working with this gomm, are first quality brooms”.
In addition to having your mind placed in filming studies, I wanted to rest from the presentations in theaters and cabarets.
I hoped to get to Paris at the end of that same month, to make two sound films and then travel to Los Angeles in March 1932.
Already at that time he spoke with conviction about the future sound cinema: “Returning to the future of sound cinema, I am optimistic. But whenever he is not subject to the simple scene as in the theater, which would mean his decay and short -term routine.
For me, The essentials of sound cinema is that it always is cinemathat it is done first Cinéma, as the French say, and that interior passages with panoramas, broad movement and changes such as the old art-mudy are varied, because it should not be forgotten that these factors constituted the preponderant basis of their successes. “(3)
For a few months Gardel was in Paris and could enjoy the city almost like a tourist.
Carlos Gardel at age 15. Photo: General Archive of the Nation.The Zorzal and the soprano
According to a version, visited the renowned French soprano Ninon Vallinartistic name of Eugenia Vallin Pardo (1886-1961), which had acted at the Colón Theater in several seasons between 1916 and 1925.
Carlos would have spent some time in Sauvagère, the house of the diva in the town of Milray, near Lyon, and would have taken advantage of the stay, in addition to enjoy a very pleasant company, To listen to tips on vocal techniques, something that always interested him. The truth is that a part of winter spent in the Riviera, visited his relatives in Toulouse and also walked through Naples and London.
In Paris he rented an apartment at number 27 of the Rue Le Ville, near the Metro Villiers station, which It became the shelter of the entire Argentine bohemian that was Boyando in Paris.
Walking through those Parisian callecitas he listened to the noise of an plane and told his friend Luis Mandarino some preonotorious words: “Che, Tano, look up. In one of those birds sure that I would not fly, because if you fall down, no one is saved”. (4)
Notes: 1. Francisco Canaro, my golden weddings with tango. My Memories 1906-1956. 2. Del Greco, Orlando, Carlos Gardel and the authors of his songs. Editions Akian Buenos Aires, June 1990. Page 386. 3. Idem. 4. Diario El Mundo, June 24, 1967.
