Juan Darthés: The Tango Singer's Son Behind the Stage Name

Juan Darthés grew up with the tangos his father, the singer Oscar Fuentes, sang on tour; he recorded tango before television made him famous.

At a glance

  • Born Juan Rafael Pacífico on 28 October 1964 in São Paulo; son of the tango singer Oscar Fuentes and the actress Leyla Dartel
  • His father, born Juan Pacífico in Llavallol in 1930, sang tango for several years in Peru and Brazil
  • Recorded tango repertoire on the albums Soledades (1994) and Así (2004)

Fuente original: «Efemérides tangueras (mayo)» (Efemérides tangueras, Club de Tango) · Resumen en español ↓

Most Argentines know Juan Darthés as a television actor. In the tango world his name appeared first for another reason: he is the son of a tango singer, Oscar Fuentes, and began as a singer of tango himself. The old Club de Tango calendar of tango anniversaries, the Efemérides tangueras, mentions him only in its entry on his father. This page follows that thread, the family and the music, with independent sources for everything the calendar does not say. It also summarises, from press reports, the criminal case brought against him in 2018.

The father: Oscar Fuentes

The May page of the calendar records, under 18 May 1930, the birth in Llavallol, in the province of Buenos Aires, of the singer Oscar Fuentes, whose real name was Juan Pacífico. He studied with the singing teacher Eduardo Bonesi (the entry spells the name “Bonei”, but the entry just above it, on the singer Ángel Oyola, gives “Bonesi”). He sang for several years in Peru and Brazil. The entry ends: father of Juan Darthés.

In an interview with the magazine Noticias in 2013, written by Diego Gualda, Darthés said he grew up surrounded by music, above all tango, because that was what his father sang on his tours abroad. His mother, Leyla Dartel, was an actress. The stage name Darthés, the magazine explains, combines the surnames of both parents, Dartel and Fuentes.

São Paulo and Temperley

The touring explains an unusual birthplace. According to Noticias, Darthés was born in São Paulo almost by chance, during one of his father’s many tours of Peru and Brazil, and grew up in Temperley, in the southern suburbs of Buenos Aires. IMDb gives his birth date as 28 October 1964, his birth name as Juan Rafael Pacífico, and says the family moved to Temperley when he was three.

Tango on record

Asked by Noticias whether he saw himself as a balladeer or a tanguero, Darthés called tango the genre he had absorbed as a child and the one in which he was most himself (our translation). The older public, the magazine wrote, remembered him as a young man who sang tango.

The record databases bear this out. Discogs lists Soledades, a 1994 album on the Epsa Music label, which opens with Tango se te nota tango and includes Viaja pibe and Carta (Buenos Aires 15 de noviembre). A 2004 album, Así, released by Sony Music under the Columbia label, includes Un ramito de violetas, Vuelvo al Sur and La City porteña. The 2023 English page at this address dated Soledades to 1998; Discogs gives 1994.

A profile of the pianist and arranger José Ogivieki in the Club de Tango series Los nuevos creadores lists Juan Darthés among the singers he had worked with, from 1994 on, in a list that also includes Roberto Goyeneche, Rubén Juárez and Libertad Lamarque.

By 2013, according to Noticias, Darthés had released eight albums, the latest of which, Canciones de amor y novelas, mixed tango, bolero and ballad. In November 2014 the newspaper Los Andes reported that his new album left tango and bolero behind for salsa, Latin pop and cumbia. He told the paper that tango had given him great satisfaction and described himself as the son of a cantor, a singer.

Stage and television

Darthés became famous as an actor. Noticias lists musical theatre productions including El beso de la mujer araña, El diluvio que viene, Molly Brown and Nine, and some twenty-three television projects, among them Gasoleros, Patito feo and the 2012 telenovela Dulce amor.

The criminal case

On 11 December 2018, at a press conference of the collective Actrices Argentinas reported by La Capital, the actress Thelma Fardin accused Darthés of raping her in 2009 in Nicaragua, during a tour of Patito feo, when she was 16. She had filed a criminal complaint in Nicaragua. Darthés denied the accusation the next day on Twitter, according to the Chilean outlet The Clinic. The case was later tried in Brazil, where he was born:

He is listed here because of his father and his tango recordings, as part of the archive’s record of tango artists. That listing implies no endorsement.

Sources