Chita Rivera was one of the last great stars of the Golden Age of Broadway musicals in the 1950s. Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story” made her famous. She later enjoyed success in “Chicago” and other musicals by John Kander and Fred Ebb. Chita Rivera has died at the age of 91. A look back at some of her greatest roles.
Chita Rivera (1933 – 2024) was one of the great stage artists in the USA. The Puerto Rican-born dancer, singer and actress received the Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2018.
IMAGO / USA TODAY Network
The song “America” made Chita Rivera famous: In 1957, composer Leonard Bernstein and director Jerome Robbins cast the daughter of a Puerto Rican saxophonist and a US government official, born in 1933, as Anita in the premiere of “West Side Story”. The role would become Rivera’s big career springboard.
With flowing skirts and Latin American temperament: Chita Rivera thrilled critics and audiences in her role as Anita in the world premiere of “West Side Story”.
picture-alliance / Reportdienste
picture alliance / ASSOCIATED PRESS | –
In the modern version of “Romeo and Juliet,” Anita takes on the role of Juliet’s wet nurse. She initially supports the lovestruck Maria, who wants to escape the confines of the Puerto Rican community, and ultimately, as an avenging angel, leads the play to its tragic end because Tony kills her lover Bernardo in an emotional moment.
Chita Rivera’s interpretation of the role remains the undisputed standard to this day, even though she was nominated for any major awards as a Latina in the 1950s – in contrast to Rita Moreno and Ariana DeBose, who played the role of Anita in the 1961 film adaptations and each received the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 2021.
But if nothing else, Rivera paved the way for other Latin American actresses on the Broadway stage in this role.
Baden-Baden
Musical classic in Baden-Baden “West Side Story” – Leonard Bernstein’s curse and blessing
Bernstein’s “West Side Story” is part of the regular repertoire in theaters and opera houses around the world. Hollywood filmed the material twice for the big screen. A new production premiered in Munich in December and will tour throughout Europe until 2024, stopping off in Baden-Baden at the beginning of February. Why does the classic musical continue to fascinate audiences 65 years after its creation?
Throughout her life, Chita Rivera saw herself primarily as a dancer and only secondarily as a singer. She also had a great love for the Chorus Line, the dance ensemble in the background of a musical. She was a member of it for many years and returned there for the film.
When director and choreographer Bob Fosse filmed the musical “Sweet Charity” in 1969, he cast Rivera opposite Shirley MacLaine as Nickie, a fun girl at a dance club. Even if it’s only a supporting role, Rivera’s strong dance expression takes center stage in the musical’s best-known number to date: She plays a central role in the ensemble number “Big Spender”.
Sweet Charity was a commercial failure and Rivera’s first of very few forays into film and television. She remained loyal to the stage throughout her life. But it was to be the start of her artistic collaboration with Bob Fosse, one of the most important directors of her career.
In the early 1970s, Bob Fosse was working on a musical adaptation of Chicago, a play about a murderess in the 1920s. Fosse’s wife, Broadway actress Gwen Verdon, had identified the play as a possible star vehicle for herself and brought her husband on board as director.
Fosse hired the composer duo John Kander and Fred Ebb for the music and eventually changed the focus of the plot. He was too afraid that Vernon’s performance alone would not carry the piece. He expanded the role of nightclub singer Velma Kelly, who catches and kills her husband and sister in the act, to the second female lead and hired Chita Rivera after working together on “Sweet Charity”.
Reviews for the original production of “Chicago” were rather lukewarm. The blatant criticism of the American celebrity cult and the Brecht-inspired address to the audience offended the Broadway audience. Nevertheless, production ran for two years.
Today, “Chicago” is one of the greatest successes in Broadway history: The 1996 revival is still running successfully in New York today; it is one of the longest seasons in the history of Broadway. It was also a second encounter for Chita Rivera, this time in the role of Roxie, which her colleague Gwen Verdon had once played.
Rivera collaborated with composer John Kander and songwriter Fred Ebb again and again over the decades. In 1984, she won her first Tony Award alongside Liza Minelli in “The Rink”, a now largely forgotten Kander/Webb musical.
The artistic highlight in 1993 was “Kiss of the Spider Woman” based on the novel of the same name by the Argentinian Manuel Puig. The chamber play is about a Marxist and a window dresser convicted of fornication who share a prison cell.
By 1993, Chita Rivera was an established name on the New York stage. For “Kiss of the Spider Woman” she received her second Tony Award, the highest honor in the New York theater scene.
IMAGE / MediaPunch
Rivera plays the spider woman Aurora, a character from old films that the gay Molina always recalls to pass the time. The production won a total of six Tonys, including the trophies for best musical and best actress for Chita Rivera.
The now 84-year-old Chita Rivera played her last leading role on Broadway in 2015, again in a work by Kander and Webb. “The Visit”, a musical adaptation of Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s “Visit of the Old Lady”, was created in 2001.
Angela Lansbury was originally cast in the lead role, but had to withdraw from the production for personal reasons. Rivera stepped in for the world premiere in Chicago, but the planned Broadway takeover was put on hold in the shadow of the September 11th attacks. It wasn’t until 14 years later that the Broadway premiere took place in the form of a one-act play with Rivera in the leading role.
Chita Rivera with “The Visit” at the 2015 Tony Awards:
As the rich Claire Zachannassian, who returns to her hometown and demands the life of her former lover if she is to avert the city’s bankruptcy, Rivera celebrated her last major triumph on the New York stage and won the last stage award of her active career, the Drama League Award.
On January 30, 2024, Chita Rivera died peacefully and after a short illness in New York, according to her publicist Merle Frimark.