Osvaldo Ribó: Tanturi's Singer and His Late Album Papel picado

Osvaldo Ribó

In 1999 Osvaldo Ribó, once a singer with Ricardo Tanturi's orchestra, recorded an album for a group of Buenos Aires collectors and named it after the tango that had given him most joy, Papel picado.

At a glance

  • Born Andrés Bartolomé Osuna on 30 November 1927 in Victoria, Entre Ríos; died on 19 April 2015
  • Sang with the orchestras of Alfredo Gobbi (as Julio Lucero), Ricardo Tanturi, Lorenzo Barbero and Mariano Mores
  • Late album Papel picado (1999): twelve songs with Hugo Rivas's guitars and four from 1978 with Roberto Grela

Fuente original: «Papel picado – Osvaldo Ribó» (Coleccionistas porteños de tango, CD Papel picado, 1999) · Resumen en español ↓

Osvaldo Ribó’s best years as an orchestra singer were the late 1940s, when he sang with Ricardo Tanturi, but he kept singing for half a century. In 1999 a group calling itself Coleccionistas porteños de tango, “Buenos Aires tango collectors”, asked him to make an album. The result was Papel picado, sixteen songs with guitar accompaniment, and the old Club de Tango website carried the collectors’ presentation of the disc. That short text, with its full track list, is the basis of this page. The biographical details come from Todotango, where Néstor Pinsón and Ricardo García Blaya wrote his profile.

Osvaldo Ribó and Roberto Grela – Una emoción · Uploaded to YouTube by “Cantando Tangos”, not an official release. The player loads from YouTube only after you click.

From Victoria to Buenos Aires

Osvaldo Ribó was the stage name of Andrés Bartolomé Osuna, born, according to Pinsón and García Blaya, on 30 November 1927 in Victoria, in the province of Entre Ríos. As a boy he moved to Rosario to go to school. When the headmistress asked him why he had come, he answered that he wanted to sing; she heard him and made him soloist of a children’s choir of about sixty voices. As a teenager he sang on the radio with guitars and in a cabaret orchestra.

In 1943, at sixteen, he moved to Buenos Aires and won a contest for new voices. Around 1944 he sang with the orchestra of Alfredo Gobbi at the Sans Souci cabaret, under the name Julio Lucero, and then with smaller groups in other venues.

The Tanturi years

His break came with the orchestra of Ricardo Tanturi, still a favourite at milongas today. Ribó joined after the departure of the singer Enrique Campos, and, according to Todotango, the name Osvaldo Ribó was chosen by radio listeners in a contest. His first recording with Tanturi, on 16 August 1946, was a duet with Roberto Videla, the waltz Amores de estudiante.

The collectors’ text sums up his path in one sentence: an important career that took him through the orchestras of Alfredo Gobbi, Ricardo Tanturi, Mariano Mores and Lorenzo Barbero. Todotango fills in the later steps. With Barbero he recorded Noche de locura (23 July 1954) and No quiero verte llorar (20 May 1955). In 1960 he recorded Aquel nocturno with the orchestra of Héctor Gondre. His time with Mariano Mores he later remembered as a bad experience. He also sang on television, and in 1987 he recorded eight numbers with the orchestra of Ricardo Martínez, released only on cassette.

The album Papel picado

Ribó himself chose the title. Papel picado, by José González Castillo and Cátulo Castillo, was, in the collectors’ words, the tango that had given him the most satisfaction in his career. The phrase means “confetti”, the cut paper thrown at carnival.

The disc has two parts:

The 1999 repertoire mixes classics and less obvious choices: Shusheta by Juan Carlos Cobián and Enrique Cadícamo, the waltz Cortando camino, Tormento by Charlo and Amadori, Milonga que peina canas by Alberto Gómez, the waltz A una mujer by Horacio Salgán and Carmelo Volpe, Equipaje by Héctor María Artola and Carlos Bahr, Bohardilla, and Alfred Arnold by Gabriel Clausi and Héctor Negro.

The four Grela tracks are Una emoción (Raúl Kaplún and José María Suñé), No quiero verte llorar (Agustín Magaldi and Rodolfo Sciammarella), the waltz Temblando and Una lágrima. No quiero verte llorar thus appears twice in his career: with Barbero’s orchestra in 1955 and with Grela’s guitars more than twenty years later. Una emoción is a good place to start for dancers who know Ribó only from his orchestral recordings: voice and guitars, nothing else.

According to Todotango, the album was released on the label of the collector Héctor Lucci. The collectors closed their presentation with pride in “this sensitive and always studious national singer” (our translation). The disc sold for 22 pesos.

A daughter in the cinema

There is one fact about Ribó that is better known outside tango than inside it. Todotango mentions that the actress Olivia Hussey, Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli’s film Romeo and Juliet, was his daughter. When Hussey died in December 2024, BBC News Mundo reported that her father was Andrés Osuna, a tango singer who performed as Osvaldo Ribó, citing a 2021 article by Patricio Orozco in La Nación.

Ribó died on 19 April 2015, according to Pinsón and García Blaya. He belongs to the generation of tango artists whose orchestral records are still played at milongas, and Papel picado shows the same voice decades later, without an orchestra.

Sources