María del Consuelo Vello Cano - so it appears in her birth certificate, although by coquetry her first surname appeared sometimes written with be- born on May 28, 1883 in that Madrid "absurd, bright and hungry". Daughter of a Galician guardiacivil and a washerwoman of El Toboso, little Consuelo spent her childhood washing the clothes of the rich on the shores of the Manzanares. The new century surprises her by marketing with her body in the arcades of the Plaza Mayor; manages to ascend the sad scale of prostitution entering a "sewing house". He works fleetingly as a painters model until in January 1902 he enters the choir of the Zarzuela Theater .

Then choose a first artistic name, Tea Rose, which serves both the alternate and the varieties. It is the time of the theater and sicaliptic rooms, islands of modernity in that Spain with its fierce moral sacristy . The choruses of the cuplé are chanted with true devotion to each other; jenízaros of the golfemia, journalists, deputies and gentlemen well surrender to the tiny genre.

Within a month of turning nineteen, Consuelo is hired for a small role in the lyrical extravagance Pacha Bum Bum , which is represented in the Japanese Hall of Alcala Street. At one point, some servants carry the girl on a tray, dressed in a transparent suit, as an offering to the Pasha. The scene causes a real sensation and candileja chicks overflow the theater and demand bises .

One of his admirers, the journalist Javier Bategón, proposes him to change his artistic name to that of Fornarina, perhaps because of his past as a model of painters, perhaps because he is of humble origin like Rafael's baker. The press begins to praise him and manages to chain some contracts, until he arrives at the Romea theater. He plays the role of a red devil in the danceable comic-lyric fad La bodega del diablo . In the foyer of that theater he meets Juan José Cadenas (1872-1947), the great love of his life and the person who most influenced his artistic career . Poet, correspondent, and, above all, a true master of the art of plagiarism, Cadenas sees a business opportunity in the blatant appropriation of successful operettas in Europe, pouring the most applauded arguments and numbers into Spanish.

It becomes a sort of Pygmalion for Fornarina: it suggests that you dye blond, learn languages; she hires him performances in Paris, Lisbon, Berlin, Copenhagen, St. Petersburg ... She records her sicaliptic coupons on slate discs, true jewels of the double meaning at 78 revolutions per minute ; the songs constitute the sound chronicle of a Spain as hungry for modernity as it is willing to shake it with bullets. Far from what will later be the coupé tamed by Franco, its lyrics spread what they seemed to censor: they gave space in the common imaginary to the boys who painted moles on the cheek, to the pioneers of feminism, to all the advances of modernity . The coupe and Fornarina itself were "the people aspiring to more aesthetic space," according to Zozaya.

La Fornarina returns to Spain become an international star. The rumors and envies increased, while his relationship with Chains deteriorated. Infidelities happen on both sides . At one point, Cadenas prohibits her from using her repertoire, knowing that learning a new song for her was "a torturous effort." For years he has suffered severe pain in the lower abdomen, attributed by some to his past as a bartender or miscarried abortions.

Although it manages to reconcile with Chains, the Fornarina senses that its star is going out . The public response is icy in the April 1915 functions at Apollo. A fibroid and several malignant cysts force it to be operated urgently on July 14 of that year. The family prohibits Juan José from visiting her in the sanatorium . Lovers cannot say goodbye. Consuelo Vello died three days later. At his funeral came intellectuals and people of the show, but fundamentally the humble people of Madrid, who recognized her as one of their own. His tomb, in the cemetery of San Isidro, is guarded by an angel whom the Civil War decapitated and left manco.

Months before he died, in the winter of 1914, he recorded the song The Last Cuplé . The day of the recording, on December 18, it was snowing in Madrid. The letter, from Cadenas, says: " And when at last, one day I / as a toy that happened, / to oblivion the public gives me, / when I sing my last coupe ... ".

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