There were then 54 highs and lows, plus a wide stalls and gallery at the top. The first remodeling project was carried out by the government of Juan José Mare, when the Municipality acquired the building from the Lapadula y Rodríguez firm, although it was completed under the management of Gustavo Checchi. In the early days, there were Italian lyrical companies, baritones, operetta ensembles, vaudevilles and varieties that toured the interior.
On the night of June 27, 1980, the curtain was raised and on the brand-new stage of the Municipal Theater Cinema, the Ballet del Sur, the Bahia Blanca ensemble that had already performed here in the celebration of the Party’s centenary, dazzled the Balcarceños in 1965. With that evening the remodeling of the Theater was inaugurated, which was completed in the municipal administration headed by Gustavo AS Checchi. The project had been born eleven years earlier and carried out by the first government of Juan José Mare, when the Municipality acquired the building from the firm Lapadula and Rodríguez, who in turn had bought it before from Florentino D´Annunzio, the neighbor identified for years with the traditional room on 16th Street. Execution of the ambitious project was started and then delayed until 1978, when work was resumed, after obtaining a loan from the Bank of the Province of Buenos Aires. So that night the Ballet created in the southern city in 1956, officialized by the Buenos Aires State in 1961 and with a solid trajectory throughout the country, the United States and presentations organized by the UNESCO. Ten days after that opening the cinema was launched, when two actors who are today prestigious and considered among the best took over the screen. Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep, separated, disputed the possession of the son in a film that had already won several Hollywood Oscars: “Kramer vs. Kramer ”.
Carlos Alberto Segura – already deceased collaborator of The vanguard– He was then director of Culture of the commune and he once said in these pages that “it was not the municipal government that acquired the Theater in 1969 that removed the boxes from the hall. It was the previous firm that eliminated the low boxes and also the tips of the high ones and also the gathering. In other words, the commune had no other alternative than remodeling ”. He said that time to do a study on what to do with the room, the acoustic engineer Federico Malvárez came, who had participated in the reform of the Mar del Plata Auditorium Theater and carried out acoustic studies at the Colón Theater in Buenos Aires. “Malvárez stood in the center of the room, looked at me and said: let’s see what happens. Then he clapped his hands, to appreciate the acoustics. He looked at me again and added: This is a disaster. Sure – he continued saying – either they are looking for specialized people who can make the original theater, or it has to be remodeled. And there was no other way out than to remodel ”. Those boxes, which were also later renovated before, were born in May 1923 when the city experienced an event: the opening of its first Theater, the Balcarce Theater. There were then 54 highs and lows, plus a wide stalls and gallery at the top. “This event – noted El Liberal, then – adds to our lives a new and effective reason for sociability that will serve as the basis for a long series of interesting evenings.” And the newspaper also considered that it was progress to add this new building and that it would be one of the usual meeting places for families. The chronicles tell us that Italian lyrical companies, baritones, operetta ensembles, vaudevilles and varieties that toured the interior began to arrive in the city.
There were also evenings combined – they were called like that – with scientific-musical meetings, in which a professor in philosophy lectured and then a cellist delighted the audience. The theater casts of José Gómez and Angélica Pagani, Gloria Fernández and Oreste Caviglia also filled the room. There were other shows and it has also remained in the familiar comment, by word of mouth, that the eternal voice of a great was once heard there. They say Carlos Gardel was there. If he sang “The Day You Love Me”, it must have been a great night. Unforgettable.
Also in the theater were pianists, string players and four orchestras. What can be called hierarchy is what Carlos Alberto Segura sought to achieve in the organization of the shows of the Municipality’s Directorate of Culture. He once explained that one of his intentions as head of the agency was to enable our public in Balcarce to enjoy the performances of figures of an important artistic level. Target size will not have been easy to achieve. But thanks to contacts that Segura maintained during his time as a student at the National University of La Plata; the strong support of the governments of Juan José Mare, first, and then Gustavo AS Checchi, plus the support of the province and also of the National Fund for the Arts, made possible a good part of what he had planned. This is how the National Symphonic Orchestra, the String Quartet of the Provincial Conservatory, the Chamber Orchestra and the Choral Singing School of Mar del Plata, the Banco Mayo Orchestra, the Almenares Quartet, and the Toulouse Capitol Orchestra, considered among the best in France, which toured Argentina and other countries.
Six prestigious pianists came to our city in different years: the young and brilliant Czech Ralph Votapek, nationalized in the United States; Manuel Rego, from Mar del Plata and world-renowned musician; Flora Nudelman; Antonio De Raco, Rodolfo Caracciolo from Balcar, Haydée Helguera and Vera Govaretzky. Other performers who were brought in during these two efforts were the violinist Brunilda Gianneo, the guitarist María Luisa Anido and the cellist Wladimir Glogal. Los Fronterizos, the Salta quartet that in those 1960s garnered ovations throughout the country and abroad, was also applauded at the Theater, when Balcarce also got used to the Argentine Singing Festival. The String Quartet for Folklore was another of the visits, such as the Chamber Ballet of the province and the bandonetist, composer and director Eduardo Oscar Rovira, who – said the critics – was a search engine for new sounds and other designs for tango . There were other special moments. One was with China Zorrilla and another when the very prominent author of children’s literature and vocal interpreter María Elena Walsh enchanted the boys of that time –now men and women- who of course sang “Manuelita”. Some years later – among other distinctions – the government of the city of Buenos Aires named her an illustrious citizen.
It was also Segura who after leaving the Provincial Conservatory of La Plata returned to his Balcarce and here he proposed in 1967 to the Municipality the creation of a conservatory. The head of the commune Juan José Mare, in his first de facto administration, approved the initiative and thus was born the establishment directed by its promoter and whose teachers were Mercedes Gonnet, Haydée Giacoia and Analía Gómez de Borgnia. But Mare suggested that he organize a musical folklore contest. First came the idea, then Segura made progress in the project, other concerns were added and everything finally led to the First Festival of Argentine Singing, much more than that intended contest. Thus, one night in the first month of 1968 on the stage of the natural amphitheater of Cerro El Triunfo, the lights were turned on, the sound was opened and in “January in Balcarce with all the Argentine song”, the popular, artistic show was launched and largest musical in the city’s history, which ran for nine more summers until 1978.
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