Politti’s artistic beginnings developed through music: he studied piano, the trumpet, and the contrabass. Later on he delved into fine arts. “By then,” he would reveal years later, “I had already acted with a couple of vocational theater groups from the province (Politti was born in Mendoza, the Argentine province bordering Chile, referred to here). Their artistic contribution was nothing to write home about but the enthusiasm for theater that they instilled in the people was very important.”

 

When the Universidad de Cuyo was opened in the city of Mendoza (the capital of the province with the same name), Fernando Cruz, the university president, entrusted Juan Oscar Ponferrada with the task of inaugurating the School of Dramatic Art. Ponferrada was instrumental in bringing the Russian professor Galina Tomalcheva to Mendoza, the city that would become her permanent home. Tomalcheva had been a student of Feódor Komisarjévksy, who had in turn studied under Konstantin Stanislavsky.

 

In 1954, Luis La Vía, the director of the School of Music at the Universidad de Cuyo, encouraged Politti to study theater. “He started out doing radio drama,” stated Domingo Politi, “and he acted in the circus, in tents, and he dabbled with puppets. He matriculated into the School of Fine Arts and wound up studying theater with Galina Tomalcheva.” 

 

Argentine actor Aldo Braga shares, “I was a student in an earlier class – Politti entered later on. Galina was a professor of great intellectual prestige working with a bunch of semi-illiterates – the difference was striking and she only accentuated it. For us, she was the voice of God and the mouthpiece of Stanislavsky – an omnipotent presence. She inspired great passion – both love and hate - and she introduced us to the world of culture, a world unknown to the unrefined of us, who had been schooled out in the countryside without any sort of contact with the great ideas or performances of the time. Galina did not hesitate in letting everyone know from the start that Politti was a very talented student.”

 

 

Excerpt from: “Luis Politti: cadencias y otros cielos”

Fabián Stolovitzky, Ediciones Corregidor, Buenos Aires, 1995