The actress of Puerto Rican origin Chita Rivera, star of Broadway musicals, died this Tuesday at the age of 91, according to her daughter, Lisa Mordente, to The New York Times. Dolores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero was an actress, dancer and singer, and she became an influential Broadway figure after rising to fame in 1957 with her performance as Anita in the original premiere of “West Side Story.”
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She debuted in the famous theaters of New York in 1952, beginning a long career that would lead her to star in hits such as “Chicago”, “Kiss of the Spider Woman”, “Nine”, “Bye bye Birdie” or its sequel “Bring back”. “Birdie.” She won two Tony Awards, considered the Oscars of theater, and was nominated ten times, more than any other musical actor or actress; Additionally, in 2018 she was awarded the honorary Tony for her life achievements.
It is in the select “EGOT” club, which is entered with the greatest distinctions in entertainment in the US: the Oscar, the Tony, the Grammy and the Emmy; and the list of awards includes the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor. “I think I have been blessed because I have been able to play many roles, and when ‘West Side Story’ came along it was the perfect musical,” she said in an interview with EFE in 2013, before leading the Puerto Rican Parade in New York that year. And Rivera, who never hid her Latino feelings or her love for Puerto Rico, added about her role as the Puerto Rican Anita: “We were able to tell our story and draw attention to the problems we had at that time.”
She took something else from “West Side Story”: she married her co-star Tony Mordente in 1957, whom she divorced nine years later but with whom she had her only daughter, Lisa, who also dedicated herself to musical theater.
Rivera was born in Washington, DC on January 23, 1933, the daughter of Pedro Julio Figueroa del Rivero, a Puerto Rican musician, and Katherine Anderson, of Scottish, Italian and Puerto Rican descent, who worked at the Pentagon after being widowed when her daughter was 7. years. “My father played the saxophone and clarinet, and my mother always wanted to dance, but she had five children,” recalled Rivera, whom her mother enrolled in a ballet school at the age of 11, channeling a talent that would soon begin to bear fruit. .
At the age of 15, she was accepted into the School of American Dance in New York, founded by George Balanchine, where she laid the technical foundations of dance that would accompany her forever on stage, as she said in an interview. Rivera had an active career that, in addition to theater, included music, the small and big screen: his most recent titles are the musical “The Visit” (2015) and the Netflix series “One Day At a Time” (2017). in which he spent three seasons.
“I worked hard. I am a positive person who forgets the negative. “You have to trust in God, have a sense of humor and laugh at yourself, you have to enjoy life,” the artist stated eleven years ago to this medium.