Rosita Serrano

Rosita Serrano (birth name Maria Martha Esther Aldunate Del Campo) was a Chilean singer and actress, who had large success in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. Because of her bell-bright voice she received the surname "Chilean nightingale". She was the daughter of the diplomat Héctor Aldunate and the opera singer Sofia del Campo, with whom she moved during the 1930s to Europe, at first to Portugal and France, and then, since 1936, to Berlin. She started to sing in the Winter Garden and in the Metropol theatre, and charmed the audience with Chilean popular songs. The German composer Peter Kreuder discovered her and she obtained a contract with Telefunken. From now on she sang particularly in German language and songs like "Roter Mohn", "Schön die Musik", "Küß mich, bitte, bitte, küß mich", "Und die Musik spielt dazu", "Der Onkel Jonathan", and "Der kleine Liebesvogel" became successful hits. Starting from 1938 she also got roles in movies such as Bel Ami (1939), The Stars Shine (1938), The Wise Mother in Law (1939) and Herzensfreud - Herzensleid (1940). Besides, she performed on tour with two of the then most successful dance orchestras - Kurt Hohenberger's and Teddy Stauffer's . One of her best-known hits is the classic 'La Paloma', included in 'Wolfgang Petersens' ' Das Boot (1981) and Bille August's The House of the Spirits (1993)'s soundtracks. In 1943 her career had an arrest: while she was on tour in Sweden, she was charged with espionage in Germany, because she had supported Jewish refugees with the incomes from a charity meeting. She didn't return to Germany to avoid the arrest, and her songs and movies remained on the black list of the Nazi regime until the end of the war. From Sweden she returned to Chile, then she tried to start a career in the USA, but she met hostility since she also had German songs in her repertoire. In 1951 returned to Germany, but had only moderate success. She participated in the German motion picture films Dark Eyes (1951) and Saison in Salzburg (1952), and later she had only few appearances in German maintenance transmissions. A comeback attempt in 1957 on tour with Kurt Hohenberger didn't have a great success. She died in 1997, in extreme poverty, in Chile, where she had spent the last years of her life.