In her 60-year career, the interpreter has brought to the stage the great classical and contemporary authors
The great theater actress Berta Riaza, winner of the National Theater Prize in 1992, died this Sunday in Madrid at the age of 94. In his 60-year career, Riaza has performed all the Spanish and international classics and contemporaries of the stage, Aesquilo, Chejov, Shakespeare, Federico García Lorca or Fernando Fernán Gómez, in a brilliant career. At the age of 14 he entered the Superior School of Dramatic Art and in 1947 he made his debut with a company led by Pepe Franco and called New Artists. That year she starred in the play ‘X=2’, but her first major success came in 1957, when she brought to life ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’, which premiered at the Spanish Theater.
From there, she became one of the most in-demand actresses on the national stage. In these years works include ‘La Orestiada’ (1959); ‘Numancia’ (1961); ‘The Glass Menagerie’ (1961); ‘They Were All My Children’ (1963); ‘Mother Courage’ (1966) or ‘The Three Sisters’ (1973). He also took part in many of the first spaces of the newly opened Spanish television, at a time when theater had a place on the small screen. Ibsen’s ‘Dollhouse’ was one of his interpretations. As early as 1980, he took part in the series ‘Fortunata y Jacinta’, the adaptation by Mario Camus of the novel by Benito Pérez Galdós.
In the 1970s his career was mainly linked to the prestigious theater director Miguel Narros, with whom he made ‘King Lear’, ‘Portrait of a Lady with a Dog’ and ‘MacBeth’, but later he approached two authors of the Method, William Layton (Tío Vania) and José Carlos Plaza, with whom he performed ‘Bicycles are for summer’ (1982); ‘The House of Bernarda Alba’ (1984) and ‘Comedy Barbarians’ (1991). Less exuberant in the cinema, where ‘Entre tinieblas’ (1983), by Pedro Almodóvar, or ‘Luces de Bohemia’, by Miguel Ángel Díez, with Paco Rabal stands out.
In addition to the National Theater Award, she received the Union of Actors Award for Best Secondary Theater Performance (1995), the Union of Actors Award for a Whole Life (1997), and the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts. ).
Source: La Verdad
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