Calle de Rita Luna

Rita Luna was born in Málaga in 1770, daughter of itinerant Aragonese actors, and became the most celebrated actress of the Madrid stage of her time. She debuted in Madrid at nineteen and soon played the great heroines of the classical repertoire, in roles by Calderón, Lope, and Tirso. Her natural way of speaking verse made her name at the Coliseo de la Cruz. At the Corral del Príncipe she overlapped with María del Rosario Fernández, “la Tirana,” and the rivalry between them fed the gossip of theatrical Madrid. Goya painted her several times; the story goes that on one of those canvases he wrote “the dogs bark at the Moon,” and that the actress herself destroyed it when she broke with her stage past. In 1806, at her peak, she left the stage and withdrew to El Pardo, devoted to charity until her death in Madrid in 1832. The street that bears her name runs briefly through Berruguete, far from the playhouses where she built her career.