Beautiful Maria of My Soul

Last updated March 13, 2019

"Beautiful Maria of my Soul" (Spanish : Bella María de mi alma) is a song prominently featured in the 1992 motion picture The Mambo Kings . In the film, it is performed in Spanish by Antonio Banderas and in English by Los Lobos. The song was written and composed by Arne Glimcher and Robert Kraft (composer). The film is based on the book The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love .

Spanish or Castilian, is a Western Romance language that originated in the Castile region of Spain and today has hundreds of millions of native speakers in the Americas and Spain. It is a global language and the world's second-most spoken native language, after Mandarin Chinese.

The Mambo Kings is a 1992 French–American musical drama film based on the 1989 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos. Directed by Arne Glimcher, it stars Armand Assante, Antonio Banderas, Cathy Moriarty and Maruschka Detmers. Set in the early 1950s, the story follows Cesar (Assante) and Nestor Castillo (Banderas), brothers and aspiring musicians who flee from Havana, Cuba to New York City in the hopes of reviving their failed musical careers. The film marks Glimcher's directing debut, and features Banderas in his first English-language role.

José Antonio Domínguez Bandera, known professionally as Antonio Banderas, is a Spanish actor, director, producer, and singer. He began his acting career with a series of films by director Pedro Almodóvar and then appeared in high-profile Hollywood films, especially in the 1990s, including Assassins, Evita, Interview with the Vampire, Philadelphia, Desperado, The Mask of Zorro, Take the Lead, The Expendables 3, and Spy Kids. Banderas also provided the voice of Puss in Boots in the Shrek series and its spin-off film Puss in Boots as well as the bee in the U.S. Nasonex commercials.

In the film, the character (Banderas) writes the song for his long-lost love, Maria Riveiro (Talisa Soto).

Talisa Soto is an American actress and former model. Soto is perhaps best known for portraying Princess Kitana in the 1995 fantasy action film Mortal Kombat and its 1997 sequel Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. Soto also starred as Lupe Lamora in the 1989 James Bond film Licence to Kill. Prior to her acting career, Soto began her career as a model; appearing in magazine issues such as Mademoiselle, Glamour and Elle.

This song received an Academy Award nomination, finally won by "A Whole New World", from Aladdin. Antonio Banderas refused to sing the song live, and tenor Plácido Domingo became the first Spaniard to perform at the Oscars ceremony.

A Whole New World song from Disneys 1992 animated film, "Aladdin".

"A Whole New World" is a song from Disney's 1992 animated feature film Aladdin, with music by Alan Menken and lyrics by Tim Rice. A duet originally recorded by singers Brad Kane and Lea Salonga in their respective roles as the singing voices of the main characters Aladdin and Jasmine, the ballad serves as both the film's love and theme song. Lyrically, "A Whole New World" describes Aladdin showing the confined princess a life of freedom and the pair's acknowledgment of their love for each other while riding on a magic carpet. The song garnered an Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 65th Academy Awards. "A Whole New World" also won the Grammy Award for Song of the Year at the 36th Annual Grammy Awards, the first and so far only Disney song to win in the category. In 2014, Adam Jacobs and Courtney Reed performed the song as Aladdin and Jasmine in the film's Broadway adaptation.

Aladdin is a folk tale of Middle Eastern origin. It is one of the tales in The Book of One Thousand and One Nights , and one of the best known—despite not being part of the original Arabic text. It was added to the collection in the 18th century by the Frenchman Antoine Galland, who attributed the tale to a Syrian storyteller, Youhenna Diab.

Tenor is a male voice type in classical music whose vocal range lies between the countertenor and baritone. The tenor's vocal range extends up to C₅. The low extreme for tenors is roughly A♭₂ (two A♭s below middle C). At the highest extreme, some tenors can sing up to the second F above middle C (F₅). The tenor voice type is generally divided into the leggero tenor, lyric tenor, spinto tenor, dramatic tenor, heldentenor, and tenor buffo or spieltenor.

Italian sisters Paola & Chiara covered this song for the album "festival" (2002)

The song was performed by Robert Moscio in his 1999 album "One By One".

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<i>The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love</i> book by Oscar Hijuelos

The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love is a 1989 novel by Oscar Hijuelos.

Pedro "Cuban Pete" Aguilar was named "the greatest Mambo dancer ever" by Life magazine and the legendary Tito Puente.

Robert Kraft is an American songwriter, film composer, recording artist and record producer. As President of Fox Music from 1994 to 2012, he supervised the music for more than 300 Fox feature films, as well as dozens of TV shows. He co-produced the 2017 Score: A Film Music Documentary about film composers and the evolution of Hollywood film music.

Palladium Ballroom second-floor dance hall above a Rexall Drugs store in New York City, famous for Latin Music

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<i>The Mambo Kings</i> (soundtrack) 1992 soundtrack album

The soundtrack to The Mambo Kings is a solid effort that effectively conveys the atmosphere inherent in the film, which was based on Oscar Hijuelos’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. Assembled here is a selection of mambos, rumbas, boleros and cha cha chas performed by stellar artists of the Latin scene including Tito Puente, Celia Cruz, Benny Moré, Johnny Pacheco and Arturo Sandoval mixed with well-known performers with roots in the form like Linda Ronstadt and Los Lobos. Besides this, the Mambo All-Stars are a high energy dance band composed of top studio sidemen from New York City and Los Angeles. With only a couple of exceptions, the tracks were cut specially for the film and as such, add a novel, accurately reflecting the Cuban music sound of the 1950s. The 2000 Elektra updated edition adds a remix of Tito Puente's "Ran Kan Kan" by Olga Tañón and a rendition of "Beautiful Maria of My Soul" featuring Antonio Banderas and legendary crooner Compay Segundo of Buena Vista Social Club fame.

<i>Desperado: The Soundtrack</i> soundtrack album

Desperado: The Soundtrack is the film score to Robert Rodriguez's Desperado. It was written and performed by the Los Angeles rock bands, Los Lobos and Tito & Tarantula, performing traditional Ranchera and Chicano rock music. Other artists on the soundtrack album include Dire Straits, Link Wray, Latin Playboys, and Carlos Santana. Musician Tito Larriva has a small role in the film, and his band, Tito & Tarantula, contributed to the soundtrack as well.

Paul Hampton is an American actor, singer, lyricist and writer. He is listed as one of one hundred major architects of American rock and roll in the British rock journal "Footsoldiers and Kings." While he was a sophomore at Dartmouth College, he was signed to Columbia Records and Columbia Pictures at the same time to write music with Hal David and Burt Bacharach. In 1960, with Bacharach he co-composed and performed the strange death disc "Two Hour Honeymoon". After this initial outing he co-wrote hits for Don Gibson, Gene Pitney, Johnny Tillotson and hits for overseas artists Also he wrote the theme for "My Mother the Car" and sang it under the group name Albuquerque. He made two albums, "Beautiful Beginnings" and "Rest Home For Children."

Ernesto Antonio "Tito" Puente was an American musician, songwriter and record producer. The son of Ernest and Ercilia Puente, native Puerto Ricans living in New York City's Spanish Harlem, Puente is often credited as "The Musical Pope", "El Rey de los Timbales" and "The King of Latin Music". He is best known for dance-oriented mambo and Latin jazz compositions that endured over a 50-year career. He and his music appear in many films such as The Mambo Kings and Fernando Trueba's Calle 54. He guest-starred on several television shows, including Sesame Street and The Simpsons two-part episode "Who Shot Mr. Burns?". His most famous song is "Oye Como Va".

Arnold "Arne" Glimcher is an American art dealer, film producer and director. He is the founder of The Pace Gallery. Glimcher has also produced and directed several films, including The Mambo Kings and Just Cause.

María Ruiz is a Spanish actress, known for her lead role in the film Summer Rain, directed by Antonio Banderas.

References

↑ The Mambo Kings (1992)

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[1] The Mambo Kings (1992)