On April 15, 1923, the New York public flocked to the Rivoli Theater. There, the businessman Lee De Forest was going to project one of the first sound film films. On the big screen, he appeared singing and dancing a young Spanish woman. She was the singer Conchita Piquer. “What Lee De Forest does is put his film sound system into operation and, for this, what he shoots are songs,” explains Begoña Soto Vázquez, tenured professor at the Rey Juan Carlos University and silent film researcher, who adds : “De Forest’s intention was to create a continuation line that would serve radio and phonography, but he did not intend to compete with the cinema.” That is why Lee De Forest films a musical theater program that was being performed at the time on Broadway: “In that vaudeville, among other artists, especially North Americans, was Conchita Piquer,” says Soto.

Conchita Piquer sang songs in Spanish for that film (an Andalusian cuplé and an Aragonese jota) and also a Portuguese fado. The tape was recorded and projected four years before what has long been considered the first sound film, ‘The Jazz Singer’ (Alan Crosland, 1927). However, La Piquer’s was not very successful. According to Begoña Soto, it did not have very good reviews, because the sound quality was not adequate: “Silent films were programmed with live music and, no matter how good a recording was -and De Forest’s was not- , nothing could be compared to having Concha Piquer sing live“. The film, 11 minutes long, was located in the United States Library of Congress by Agustín Tena, creator of Dezine magazine.

By 1923, Concha Piquer had already become a regular on New York musical theater posters. She acted alongside other big stars like Al Johnson or Eddie Cantor. The difference with them is that she had left from Valencia a few years ago. When she was barely 13 years old, she sang in a Valencian theater. Among the public was the composer Manuel Penella. “Penella notices her because she is very talented in singing. and offers to take her to the United States,” says Carla Berrocal, comic book artist and author of ‘Doña Concha: the rose and the thorn’. “Her mother went with her and, at first, Conchita went as a tailor’s assistant, because the objective was to train her in the theater”, adds Berrocal. However, the producer of the play that Penella was going to perform in New York heard Conchita sing behind the scenes and asked Penella to include her in the show. According to Berrocal, “it is she who earned all the prominence and, as a result of there, a lot of shows arise, both in the United States and in Central America”.

He returned to Spain, leaving behind the loneliness he felt in New York. With her, she brought everything she had learned in the United States: “The true merit of Concha Piquer was that she transformed the American variety show into a Spanish variety show,” explains Carla Berrocal. She retired in 1958, after her voice broke for a moment at a concert. He left a great legacy in the Spanish copla. She was, says Carla Berrocal, a pioneering woman: “It is true that she had a privileged position, but she was a woman who drove cars, who was in charge of her own company, with what that means between the 40s and the 60s, to command a lot of men, with all the bad fame that brought him”. The cartoonist vindicates the figure of La Piquer: “Once, Franco asked him to sing a song for him and he said: ‘If Franco wants me to sing a song for him, pay a ticket and come see me'”.

Until June 11, 2023, there will be the exhibition ‘Doña Concha: an exploration around the couplet and Conchita Piquer‘ at the Valencia City Hall, in order to pay homage to the ‘queen of the Spanish couplet’. As explained by the curator of the exhibition, Cristina Chumillas, the common thread is the comic by Carla Berrocal and, in the first month of the exhibition, “the reception has been very good, there is a large number of visits”. There, you can find the famous trunks of La Piquer, which gave rise to the popular phrase ‘you travel more than the trunks of La Piquer’.