Berta Singerman — actress and reciter of poetry with roots in the Russian Empire
Berta Singerman was born on 9 September 1901 in the Minsk Governorate of the Russian Empire, now Belarus, into a family of observant Jews: in Minsk, according to Wikipedia and her obituary in La Nación, or in Mozyr, according to the Jewish Women's Archive. Her father, Aaron Singerman, emigrated to Argentina first and, soon after finding work there, laying railway track or working on farms in the interior, brought his family to join him in Buenos Aires, where they settled in the Villa Crespo district. Two more children were born in Argentina, among them her sister Paulina, who also became an actress.
Her father founded the first Yiddish theatre company in Buenos Aires, and Berta was performing with it by the age of ten, touring the Jewish agricultural colonies of Entre Ríos; from 1913 she appeared with Jewish theatre companies in the city to great acclaim. She then moved to the Spanish-language stage, and in the 1920s, through friendships with the poet Alfonsina Storni and the writer Horacio Quiroga, developed the art for which she became famous: the dramatic recital of poetry, which she called 'audiciones poéticas'.
In the mid-1920s she toured Spain with her husband, Rubén Enrique Stolek, appearing at the Teatro de la Comedia in Madrid and frequenting the literary circle of Ramón del Valle-Inclán, and she formed friendships with Juan Ramón Jiménez, Manuel de Falla and Federico García Lorca. By the 1930s she was performing throughout the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking world, in Spain, Mexico, Brazil and across Latin America, as well as in the United States, Europe and Israel, filling theatres, bullrings and football stadiums without the help of radio or television. Her repertoire ranged from Shakespeare, Calderón, Lope de Vega and Goethe to Neruda, Gabriela Mistral, Carpentier, Machado and Lorca.
She also acted in films, including the silent La vendedora de Harrod's (1921), the Spanish-language Hollywood production Nada más que una mujer (1934) and Ceniza al viento (1942), and in 1946–48 returned to the theatre with an Argentine company in Buenos Aires, Santiago and Montevideo. She was active in Jewish and Zionist causes, and her career lasted into the 1980s.
She died in Buenos Aires on 10 December 1998, aged ninety-seven.
"Brought to Argentina as a small child; her father founded the first Yiddish theatre company in Buenos Aires."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Minsk or Mozyr, Minsk Governorate (now Belarus)
Born in 1901 in the Minsk Governorate — in Minsk according to most accounts, in Mozyr according to others — into an observant Jewish family, she emigrated to Argentina with her parents as a young child.
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Minsk or Mozyr, Minsk Governorate (now Belarus). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.