A sixteen-year-old Jewish girl, Ester Tessler, is winning the heart of the people of Brazil.
Ester, as she is called by the fourth estate and others who are her admirers, is the newest star among the declaimers, espousers of an art much more popular here and in Europe than it is in the United States.
Miss Tessler is the daughter of a middle-class family of Rio Grande do Sul. She began her artistic career about two years ago in Curityba, where, with the aid of friends, she gave her first recital. Encouraged by the reception accorded her at that time, she determined to devote herself to the furtherance and perfection of her talents for declamation and interpretation.
The results of her efforts were reflected in the delight her audiences exhibited wherever she went. Accompanied by her father, the young diseuse visited a number of cities, among them Rio de Janeiro. She came here preceded by an avalanche of favorable press notices.
TELLS OF THRILLS
Ester by no means believes she is the finished artist. In the almost childlike fashion appropriate to her years she tells the story of her life and her future plans, and of how thrilled she is by the warmth and friendliness people everywhere show her.
When she has completed her engagements here Ester intends to go back to Rio de Janeiro to continue her studies. At present she recites the works of native Brazilian and Portuguese writers, but she is planning a recital of selections from the works of Yiddish poets and expects to embark on such a program in the near future.
In the Argentine a Jewess named Bertha Singerman has won popular acclaim as a diseuse. At the end of her most recent tour of South America she went to Hollywood, where she obtained a motion picture contract.
Dramatic critics of Brazil predict that in a few years Ester Tessler will be at least as great an artist as Bertha Singerman is today.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
