Matilde Martín

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Architecture · Subcategory: Squares, streets & markets · Year: 1897-1951

The Salamanca neighbourhood has a street named in honour of the lyrical singer of Tenerife origin Matilde Martín, a figure of great importance in her time and now little remembered. 

Eusebia Matilde Martín Hernández (Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 1897-1951) was a magnificent soprano who showed great artistic talent from childhood. She began her singing training under the baritone Néstor de la Torre and made her public debut at the May festivals of 1916, at barely nineteen years old. After obtaining a scholarship from the City Council, Matilde Martín continued her studies in singing and declamation with Ignacio Tabuyo, in Madrid. After completing her training, she participated in concerts with international opera figures such as José Palet, Augusto Ordóñez and Graziella Pareto, although gradually she specialised in the world of zarzuela. 

After becoming a widow at a very young age, two years into her marriage, in 1922 she was encouraged to open a singing academy in Santa Cruz and the following year she decided to move to the capital of the country to dedicate herself professionally to performance. There, shortly after arriving, the composer Amadeo Vives hired her for the Teatro de Apolo. In the mythical coliseum on Alcalá Street she debuted with the operas Maruxa and Nelva, the latter a premiere by the composer and conductor from Tenerife Santiago Sabina. Shortly afterwards, she was chosen to star in the re-premiere of Don Lucas del Cigarral at the Teatro de la Zarzuela, and to present Doña Francisquita in America on a tour of the main theatres of Argentina, Uruguay, Cuba, Peru and other countries. She performed several times at the Teatro Guimerá in her hometown and at the Pérez Galdós and Teatro Circo Cuyás in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, presenting operas and lyrical farces. 

The "Tenerife woman with the golden voice," as she was known, possessed a voice of considerable range that allowed her to take on both dramatic and light-hearted roles. The few recordings she left are sufficient testimony to perceive her enormous lyrical quality and interpretative ability, which produced the admiration of her professional peers.  

When in 1935 she premiered La Malquerida in Barcelona in the role of Raimunda, composed for her voice by maestro Penella, she achieved great success and received congratulations from Jacinto Benavente himself (Nobel Prize in Literature), author of the play that inspired the homonymous zarzuela.

Matilde Martín had the honour of being hired as the leading figure on the two only occasions in which Spanish lyrical theatre received state support in the first half of the last century: at the end of the 1920s at the Teatro de la Zarzuela in Madrid, with fabulous shows whose costumes were even exhibited to the public, and which toured numerous cities in the country; and during the Spanish Civil War at the Gran Teatro del Liceo in Barcelona, where she performed numerous opera and zarzuela performances under the artistic direction of composer Salvador Bacarisse and set designer Eugenio Casals. 

At the end of the 1940s, suffering from a serious illness, she returned to Santa Cruz where she opened a singing academy in her home on Imeldo Serís Street, collaborating until her death, which occurred in 1951, with the Masa Coral Tinerfeña choral group.

The street in the Salamanca neighbourhood that bears her name displays a bronze plaque with her effigy donated in 1953 by the "Asociación Islas Canarias" of Buenos Aires.

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