Jovita Fuentes: Teargas Incident and Career Turning Point

Jovita Fuentes and her mother (left), Dolores Fuentes, with her impresario and pianist. 

On February 15, 2020, Jovita Fuentes could have been 125 years had she lived long enough. The theatre legend was born and raised in Capiz but obtained her piano, and later, music education in Manila, where she nurtured her interest in performing and eventually got the knack of it. She wanted to teach voice but her exacting standards demanded that she should be best in it. She decided to go to Italy to learn from the masters. But it would be decades later before she could teach, for the European theatres and concert halls called her. In 1925, she made her debut performance as the helpless and hapless Cio-Cio San in Puccini’s Madam Butterfly at the Teatro Municipale in Piacenza. Her extra-ordinary performance was noticed and she soon toured around Europe where she performed in Germany, Austria, France, Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Poland. She also graced the invitation of royalties, including Queen Marie of Romania, and made friends with European nobility and aristocracy.

Her most unforgettable roles where as Liu Yu in Puccini’s Turandot, Mimi in Puccini’s La Boheme, Iris in Pietro Mascagni’s Iris, the title role of Salome (which composer Richard Strauss personally offered to her including the special role of Princess Yang Gui Fe in Li Tai Pe).

By the second half of the 1920s, Jovita Fuentes’ career surged, but by the early 1930s, with the ascendance of the Nazi Party in Germany, anti-foreign and anti-Jewish campaigns grew. A disturbing incident occurred in 1932, which would serve as the beginning of another phase in her career.

On October 21, 1932, Jovita Fuentes was to perform the title role of Salome in Wuppertal. It was a sold-out show but towards the start of her performance, she was annoyed by the unusual noise outside her dressing room. According to her niece, Lilia Hernandez Chung, who wrote her biography Jovita Fuentes: A Lifetime of Music (1978), the prima donna did not bother check what was going but instead busied herself in preparing for the show. As the time came for her to come out, she wondered why nobody in the crew knocked to tell her that the show was about to start. Little did she know that some youths had stormed the theatre and released teargas bombs to halt the performance. The crew took it upon themselves to handle the situation and despite the delay the show went on like nothing happened. Jovita delivered a yet-again stunning performance, much to the deafening applause of the audience. It was not until the next morning that she learned about chaos, much to her shock.

The news spread quickly, reaching New York and Manila. It landed on the front page of the Sunday Tribune. Her enraged Filipino fans could not contain their anger. In fact, the town council of Lucban, Quezon, drafted a resolution and sent it to the German authorities as a sign of protest.

New of the teargas incident in Germany reached Manila and landed on the front page a national daily. 

Jovita took the teargas incident and the rising German nationalism as signs that it was time to go home. She held on a little bit and moved to Milan, but with less and less contracts coming by, the financially-hard-up Jovita finally decided to return home in 1933.