Marcos Mundstock

Marcos Mundstock (Santa Fe, May 25, 1942-Buenos Aires, April 22, 2020) was a renowned Argentine broadcaster, creative editor, actor, comedian and comedian.

He stood out for his work for more than 50 years as a member of Les Luthiers.

Biography

Mundstock was the son of Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants from Rava-Ruska, a city in the Galicia region of Eastern Europe, currently part of Ukraine. The city was part of Poland after the First World War, so Mundstock's parents emigrated to Argentina with a Polish passport.

Regarding his family history, Mundstock told:

My dad, who was a watchmaker, and came to teach me some of his craft, came to Argentina only in 1930 (here he had a sister) and settled in the city of Rosario. My mom had arrived with her family a year earlier and lived in Santa Fe.

Someone who knew them contacted them. Later they married, and went to live in Rosario, where my sister was born. Then they moved to the city of Santa Fe, where I was born in 1942. Seven years later, we moved to Buenos Aires. My family talked in idish. I speak well, though I never spoke as fluently as they did.

Since he was little, Mundstock was exposed to different musical influences, according to himself:

In my house I always heard music, my dad loved it. When I was a boy, we listened to radio programs from the Italian community. So I met several famous tenors, such as Beniamino Gigli and Tito Schipa. We listened to many Neapolitan songs, as well as opera arias. That was for me a first approach to music, with great enjoyment.

Of course we also heard Jewish programs. The synagogue liturgical singers had a very operatic voice. Some were fantastic and my father loved it. During my childhood we had some economic problems.

After moving from Santa Fe to Buenos Aires, my father spent a few years without having a stable job. Maybe that's why he never sent me to take music lessons, and for the same reason, I didn't think of asking.

At the beginning of his participation in Les Luthiers he worked in radio and advertising, although he soon began to dedicate himself exclusively to the group's performances. Together with the founder of the ensemble, Gerardo Masana, he created the character of the fictional composer Johann Sebastian Mastropiero, on whose supposed life and work many of the musical pieces they perform, as well as their introductory texts, are based. Although with Les Luthiers he occasionally plays an instrument, such as the gom-horn, Mundstock acknowledges being the member of the ensemble with the least qualities for musical interpretation. According to his own account, at the age of 24 he bought a piano and tried to learn:

But he had a kind of blockage. It was not that I had no capacity, but lacked the necessary constancy and patience to sit down and practice. I wanted to learn everything very quickly. And in music, learning times are very difficult to modify.

My attempts to learn piano did not thrive. Music is an outstanding subject in my life.

Later I took singing lessons with a teacher. I had already studied singing before, and I always had the fantasy of being a singer.

Recognized for his bass voice, he stood out for recounting the introductory texts of most of the works in each show. For that he used his skills as a professional announcer, to which he added his personal humorous touch.

In Mar del Plata, on February 8, 1971, in the middle of an argument after performing in a show where they worked together, he suffered an attack by Nacha Guevara who threw a glass cup in his face, causing him to cut for which they had to get several stitches. Guevara was sentenced to two months in prison, a sentence that was suspended due to lack of criminal record.

Among the awards that the comedy group has received throughout its career are the Max Prize for Performing Arts (2001), awarded by the SGAE, the Latin Grammy for musical excellence (2011), the Princess of Asturias de Comunicación, in addition, the Spanish Government has granted them the Commendation of Number of the Order of Isabel la Católica (2007) and, in 2012, Spanish nationality by letter of nature.

In recent years he has joined some previous appearances on television with the interpretation of supporting roles in Argentine films for cinema (for example It's not you, it's me or Roma), and in a Spanish one (Torrente 3).

Also in 2008 he participated (as a dubbing actor alongside Daniel Rabinovich, Jorge Maronna, Carlos López Puccio and Carlos Núñez Cortés) in the Disney film Bolt, thus making a secondary appearance, as one of the pigeons with which He finds the dog Bolt, when he is lost in New York City looking for Penny.

In 2011 he participated in the film My First Wedding with the role of Father Patricio. He also voiced Evaristo in Metegol and acted in The Tale of the Weasels , a remake of The Boys from Before Didn't They used arsenic directed by Juan José Campanella.

In January 2020, he announced his temporary withdrawal from the stage due to medical advice due to a health problem that he had been suffering from since 2019. He finally died at the age of seventy-seven on April 22 of the same year in Buenos Aires.

Dual nationality

Marcos Mundstock had dual Spanish-Argentine nationality. This is recognized by the dual nationality agreement signed between Spain and Argentina. In the case of Marcos Mundstock, he had Argentine nationality since birth and, at the same time, without one canceling the other, he had Spanish nationality because he obtained it through the Nature Charter of the Government of Spain, approved by Royal Decree 1302/ 2012 of the Council of Ministers, published in the Official State Gazette, on September 26, 2012.

Instruments he played at Les Luthiers

Informal

• Gom-Horn to pistons
• Gom-Horn da testa
• Natural Gom-Horn
• Yerbomatófono d'amore

Formal

• Bombo
• Cencerro
• Pandereta
• Plates
• Güiro
• Tom standing
• Triangle
• Sintetizer

Filmography

• That's right. - Voice over (1974)
• Rome - Gustavo Smirnoff (2004)
• Bed inside - Victor (2004)
• It's not you, it's me. - Analyst (2004)
• Torrente 3: The Protector - Change (2005)
• Black cinema - Interview (2007)
• Ratatouille - Auguste Gusteau (doblaje for Argentina) (2007)
• Bolt - Joey (doblaje para Argentina) (2008)
• My first wedding - Father Patricio (2011)
• Metegol - Evaristo (doblaje para Argentina) (2013)
• The Weasel Tale - Martín Saravia (2019)

Television

Death

Marcos Mundstock died on April 22, 2020 at the age of 77, as a result of complications derived from a brain tumor.