Life
Rita's family and upbringing was middle-class. Her father, Domingo Montaner Pulgarón, was a white pharmacist and her mother, Mercedes Facenda, a mulatta; she herself was short in stature, good-looking with a fine smile, and intelligent. She learned English, Italian and French at religious school, and at 10 attended the Peyrellade Conservatory in Havana. There she studied music: solfege, theory, harmony and piano; at 16 she started on voice lessons.
She was from the start a potential star: her first press notice came in 1912, her first press photograph in 1913, in 1915 she received two bronze medals for piano. In 1917, Montaner played Mendelssohn in her final examination at the Peyrellade Conservatory in Havana; she graduated in piano, song and harmony with a gold medal.
Rita married a lawyer, Dr Alberto Fernández Díaz, in 1918. They had two sons, Rolando and Alberto. The marriage lasted until his death in 1932, and she married again, twice. At the end of her life, when she died of cancer, there were widespread public demonstrations of grief at her funeral. She had embodied the feelings of a turbulent era between Cuban independence and the Castro revolution.
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