La Copla Española – Imperio Argentina

Magdalena Nile del Río, whose stage name was Imperio Argentina was born in December 1910 in the Barrio de San Telmo in Buenos Aires. Her father was Antonio Nile, a guitarist from Gibraltar and her mother the Spanish dancer Rosario del Río. She sang and danced from an early age and made her début at 14 at the Teatro Romea in Madrid. The playwright Jacinto Benavente, who was a connoisseur of the genre, was smitten and commented on how much she reminded him of two of the great Divas of the time – Pastora Imperio and La Argentinita – and thus her stage name came into being.
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