Susana Naidich: The Voice Teacher Behind a Tango Singer

Susana Naidich

Club de Tango's tango calendar names Susana Naidich only once, as one of the teachers who trained the voice of the tango singer Gloria Marcó.

At a glance

  • Named in Club de Tango's Efemérides tangueras as a vocal technique teacher of the tango singer Gloria Marcó (born 8 September 1955)
  • A licensed speech and voice therapist (licenciada en fonoaudiología); her professional college published a farewell notice after her death
  • Sang on the album Cantares de madre, listed in a University of Pennsylvania Libraries sound catalogue

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

Susana Naidich was not a tango singer, and the old Club de Tango website never gave her an entry of her own. Her name appears exactly once, in the September page of the Efemérides tangueras, the club’s day-by-day calendar of tango anniversaries. There she is listed as one of the teachers who trained the voice of a younger tango singer, Gloria Marcó. That single line is the reason this page exists. Below we set out what the calendar says and the little we could confirm about Naidich from independent sources. We have left out everything we could not check.

A voice class with Susana Naidich · Official release on YouTube. The player loads from YouTube only after you click.

What the tango calendar says

The entry is under 8 September. It records that the cancionista (female tango singer) Gloria Marcó was born on that day in 1955 in Belgrano, Buenos Aires. Her real name was Gloria Susana Marcolongo, and she was the daughter of Héctor Marcó. According to Todotango, Héctor Marcó (1906–1987), born Héctor Domingo Marcolongo, was a lyricist, singer, composer and actor. Among his tangos is Corazón, written with Carlos Di Sarli.

The calendar goes on to say that Gloria Marcó studied vocal technique with four teachers: Virgilio Expósito, Susana Naidich, Cristina Béquer Hoffman and Juan Manuel Miró. She sang in venues in Buenos Aires, London and Greece, and she wrote tangos of her own, among them Nací poeta, Mariposa perdida, Fantasía, El escapulario and Autopista.

That is all the calendar says about Susana Naidich. It gives no dates for her and does not describe her work.

A teacher of the voice

What the calendar implies, that Naidich taught voice, is confirmed elsewhere. The Colegio de Fonoaudiólogos de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, through its Pergamino branch, published a farewell notice when she died. It gives her the titles maestra and licenciada en fonoaudiología, a university degree in speech and voice therapy, and calls her a colleague. The notice gives no date or place of death.

A fonoaudióloga treats and trains the voice as a physical instrument. That fits the wording of the calendar entry, which speaks of técnica vocal, vocal technique, rather than of interpretation or repertoire.

A singer in her own right

Naidich was also a performer. The Freedman sound catalogue of the University of Pennsylvania Libraries lists an album titled Cantares de madre with Susana Naidich as vocalist; the catalogue title also names a chamber orchestra. One of its tracks is Encantamiento, a setting by the Argentine composer Carlos Guastavino of a poem by Gabriela Mistral, with Salvador Drucker on guitar. The catalogue gives no label or year.

The one recording we could confirm, then, comes from Argentine art song rather than tango. Her link with the tango world, as far as the Club de Tango material shows, ran through a singer she trained: she was one of the teachers behind the tango artists who appear in the old calendar.

What we left out

The English page published at this address in 2023 contained a detailed biography of Naidich: a birth date, opera engagements in Europe and North America, named conductors, an award from the City of Buenos Aires, a list of famous students and a discography. We could not confirm any of these details in a source we were able to open, so none of them is repeated here. If you have a reliable published source on Susana Naidich, such as an obituary, an interview or a library record, we would be glad to add it.

Sources