Chenoa enters the photo studio with the same energy he displays on stages and television sets. She doesn't leave anyone on the team without saying hello, she jokes with the makeup artist, she laughs with the photographer, and she's excited about the outfit the stylist picked out for her. But Laura Corradini (Mar del Plata, Argentina, 48 years old), the real woman behind the character, is tired. “More exhausted. And I've had back pain for weeks, but now I don't have time to go to the physiotherapist,” he admits after posing for four hours. When the camera turns off, he lights a cigarette. “I smoke when I'm stressed,” apologizes the singer, caught in a whirlwind of information since it was announced that she had separated from her husband, the surgeon Miguel Sánchez Encinas.
The soap opera is broadcast daily on television and in gossip magazines. The media persecution Chenoa endures – paparazzi surveillance at the door of her home, awkward questions at photo ops – makes her relive everything she endured two decades ago, when, at the age of 27, she was one of the stars of the first edition of became the musical talent show Operación Triunfo (OT): her very public romance with David Bisbal, followed by an even more public breakup; the hurtful comments, the speculations… Her personal situation coincides with a peak in her work that has once again brought her to the height of her fame. The singer presents the twelfth edition of OT, which will be broadcast on the streaming platform Amazon Prime; hosts late night radio “Take it less strict” on Europa FM; He is promoting his new single “Dance with you” and it is one of the big attractions of the fourth season of “The Challenge”, a competition on Antena 3.
Where do you find the energy to work so hard in such a complicated personal moment?
A friend recently asked me the same thing. I have a lot of tools after going through so much adversity in life.
I don't think she's very self-pitying.
I don't feel much self-pity. Natalie [su amiga desde que compitieron juntas en OT] She is my neighbor and she tells me the same thing: “Don't cry, I'm waiting for you to cry.” But I dose my pain a lot, I don't allow myself to suffer completely. Would it be good for me to cry? Yes, but over time it hurts less because it has happened to you before. As you get older, you realize there's no point in feeling sorry for yourself. I cry when I least expect it: at a song, a series, a movie…
“I have done many things that 20 years later they still ask me about Bisbal. “It's been a long time,” says Chenoa, wearing a Dolce & Gabbana jacket, Wolford tights, Rene Caovilla shoes and a Les Rocailles ring by Grassy. Santiago Belizon
Operación Triunfo 2023, the first major live broadcast on a streaming platform in Spain, has been a success since the first gala. “A new stage is opening and a circle is closing for me,” Chenoa said in her debut as host of the show that made her famous. Her teary eyes suggested she was referring to her recent breakup. “At the first gala I felt sick. I thought I was twitching on that Godzilla stage with all the spotlights in my face. “I haven’t felt that for a long time,” he admits. Their presence in OT has managed to bring together two very different generations of viewers in front of the screens: the nostalgic ones who saw them at a competition more than 20 years ago and the Generation Z, who lived between the mid-nineties and the first years of this Year was born century. The young audience, the first generation fully at home in reality television, follows day after day the development of a group of emerging stars who are very similar to them: they master the dialect of reality television and are not afraid of the camera, because they were born with you come from home and have no prejudices about their private life. In this issue, for example, only five participants declared themselves openly heterosexual.
Amazon Prime does not disclose its viewership numbers, but OT 2023, through its application implemented in 2017, has already broken a voting record, with 7,500,000 votes in the days leading up to the fifth gala. The record for live audience consumption on the YouTube channel was also broken with 143,000 concurrent users connected. In four weeks, the show has racked up 1,000 million views on TikTok, and every Monday, hashtags related to the galas reach the top spot on the X-Trends list (formerly Twitter). Meanwhile, social networks are flooded with old pictures of Chenoa from her time as a candidate. OT 2023 revived the 2002 Chenoa. And that stirred things within her. “I'm having a hard time digesting everything that's happening. I had to find a way to deal with so many emotions because for me they were 20 years ago. When they offered to introduce me to the program, I said to myself: be careful, where will you end up? “Are you sure you want to come back?” she explains. Now he believes the risk was worth it.
Have you felt fear during these months?
If many. I feel fear, especially when I cannot control my inner judge. I put a lot of effort into it. But my psychologist helps me and advises me. The passion flower [planta medicinal con propiedades sedantes y ansiolíticas] It helps me a lot too.
Does passionflower work?
Yes, I recently went to the herbalist and said, “Sorry, I'm not feeling well. “I'm like a headless chicken.” He told me that passionflower was very good. And he was right. I take the passion flower and I'm like new. I am a different person. I swear.
The herbalist's associate must have been hallucinating…
No, because I walk a lot. I take a lot of herbal teas.
After 20 years, have you gotten used to the interest in your personal life?
I still don't fully understand why my personal life is so interesting. The press has been standing guard on my doorstep for months and it still shocks me like it did on the first day. It shocks me and scares me. You don't get used to it, you just learn to deal with it. It's something I don't talk about with my friends.
“My best marriage is the one I have with the public. I get the best compliments when I go to the supermarket,” says the singer. In the picture she is wearing an Alberta Ferretti dress and a Gádor bracelet from Grassy.Santiago Belizon
What hurts you most about fame?
Let me prejudge you. That they insult me without knowing me, just because they see a photo of me. I can not stand that. In my case, they kept a photo of me from 20 years ago. They don't let me move forward, they don't let me turn the page.
Does it refer to the term “victim” or “despised”?
I don't think they see me as a victim, but as a worthy drama. I feel like they're constantly looking for worthy drama in me, that they want to see me fall… but they won't get it. It gives me strength to know that they have no trust in me. Although it costs. Now, when I take part in a photo shoot, I worry and put myself in a state that I don't like, where I'm neither happy nor calm. Everything I say is distorted and statements are inserted that have nothing to do with what I am explaining.
20 years ago the press was a bit unfair to you. And it seems that it still is.
So everything was there. And it had a violent point. Everything was out of control and still is. They were very sexist towards me. I remember once being photographed with my dog. I had just broken up with a couple and they captioned these photos: “The Cellulite of Heartbreak.” I walked to my house crying. It hurt me a lot. I wasn't feeling well and that ultimately brought me down.
It doesn't look like things have changed that much…
Before they told me, “You're crazy.” Now they tell me, “You're intense.” Words are replaced, but they still mean the same thing. The machismo is still there, but disguised. But that's their business, not mine. I learned that I don't sleep with journalists, but with myself.
A male artist isn't asked about his personal life that often.
Of course not. There is still no equality. But society is beginning to speak out in the face of certain headlines, certain news stories, and certain ways of handling information. I was recently chased through a train station and the pictures had about half a million views on social media. Many people commented, “Why don't you leave the girl alone?” Now people have the opportunity to express their opinion. It's like when they ask me about one of my ex-girlfriends. I give an answer and then they say I brought up the topic. You ask me, I am friendly and I answer.
Why do you think they keep asking you about David Bisbal so many times and yet don't ask him about you?
I don't know and I'll never know.
It's strange, isn't it?
It doesn't bother me when people ask me about his career because I have great respect for him professionally. But I can't find any explanation. It grabs my attention and bores me. I have done many things so that 20 years later they still ask me about Bisbal. A lot of time has passed. David recently answered something similar and it struck me as a turning point. I felt supported. He makes his life and I make mine, but that doesn't mean I hate him or he hates me. No problem. Time passes and nothing more. There are no hard feelings.
The woman is always the one who has to explain…
Absolutely. Women are responsible for explaining sentimental, family and all sorts of situations. I do not know why. It's always the woman who has to explain a separation, a divorce or whatever. [sobre su situación sentimental, ella solo ha dicho que no se trata de una ruptura, sino de una “separación temporal”].
“I have fears, but my psychologist and my passionflower help me a lot,” says the artist, who is wearing a turtleneck bodysuit from Wolford. Santiago Belizon
The first edition of Operación Triunfo, broadcast on La 1 de Televisión Española between October 2001 and February 2002, marked a before and after in the Spanish music scene. The weekly live galas became a ratings success and reached record numbers. Huge quantities of OT recordings were sold every week at a time when the industry was being devastated by piracy. The SGAE published that the talent show participants contributed to the improvement of the recorded music market with sales of between three and four million albums.
More than 13 million Spaniards watched the final of this first edition of OT. Chenoa, one of the oldest in the academy – she was 27 and had been performing in hotels and casinos in Mallorca since she was 16 – took fourth place. “So I was very tough, very energetic. There wasn't that much diversity, not just sexual but also character. And it was frowned upon for me to be tougher than other participants or to speak intensively. The public didn't like that. It was strange to see a woman with my personality on TV. And it affected me in every way,” he explains. “I was also very young and very doubtful. Today the generation in OT is very natural, organic, flexible and self-confident. Things happen to them and they accept them normally. “That is very cool.”
And where did his armor come from?
When you start working at 16, it's normal to have this toughness at 26 or 27, the age when I started competing in OT. There were no weak spots, I had a lot of calluses. Everyone is born into a certain world and with a certain story, and mine wasn't easy. The world I moved in was not easy. The music business has many leagues, some are more unpleasant than others, and there are leagues where you have to take more care of yourself. And I took care of myself. I saw that being tough was useful to me. I strengthened myself in this position so that no one would hurt me, so that no one would touch me.
Why did you start singing so young? Out of necessity?
I started with my parents, they were already singing in hotels. For me it was like a continuation of the craft, a craft thing. I saw it in my house, I inherited it and I repeated it.
In 2002, at the end of the first edition of OT, Chenoa and the other 15 participants went on a major tour that attracted more than half a million visitors. They filled the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium and the Palau Sant Jordi. Many artists did not welcome her with open arms. More than a hundred singers and musicians have signed the manifesto. No more scams against the OT phenomenon. The signatories included Joaquín Sabina, Enrique Bunbury, Miguel Ríos, Luis Eduardo Aute and Diego el Cigala. “The nice thing is traveling in a van to play first for a few people and then for more people. It is a failure to occupy two Bernabéus in the first month of your career. They create mentally ill people and children who do not know how to live otherwise,” said Dani Martín. “Operation Triumph is a clear and absolute example of Stalinism. These children have to wear uniforms and think in a certain way. They don’t think, they obey,” Loquillo said in an interview on ABC.
Have any of these artists apologized to you?
No, what's wrong? But I don't think it's a question of apology.
Well, his artistic quality and that of his colleagues have been questioned.
Fear of the unknown is normal. At that time, OT was something very new that exploded the market. No one saw it coming, not even those who made the program. Nobody understands success, not even us.
Alejandro Sanz also expressed criticism of OT. Years later he was a judge on “The Voice”, a similar format.
As a matter of fact. But from all of this I learned that they don't give us much room to make mistakes. We must give people the right to make mistakes and be able to correct them. Some fix the problem by running a program they wouldn't have done before. But there is no need for hostility. I notice a lot of anger these days. You say one thing and you have to stick with it, you can't change your mind.
It is said that the success of OT also makes the participants sick. Are you sick?
No, I had good tools at home. We talked a lot and broke everything down to find out exactly what we needed to learn from it. My grandfather always told me: “Don’t rest on your laurels.” That helped me a lot. It was clear to me that success is something concrete. Now we talk about mental health, but back then it wasn't talked about. Luckily, I was already on the way to see a psychologist.
So you've already seen a psychologist?
I always went to the psychologist. I like doing mental hygiene. I think of it like gymnastics.
And now do you have time to go?
When I have a break, I don't go for a massage, I go to the psychologist to get a mental massage.
“It is always the woman who has to explain a separation,” he says. The singer wears a Giorgio Armani dress and a platinum and diamond necklace from Ansorena.Santiago Belizon
Chenoa prides herself on having a well-equipped mind. “When I was successful, it didn’t go to my head,” he says. In April 2002, a month after OT ended, she released her first album, the self-titled “Chenoa”, which earned her quadruple platinum status. Several singles from this work, such as “Atrévete”, “When you go” and “Yo te daré”, are already part of Spanish pop history. Twenty years, seven studio albums and two live albums, as well as more than a million copies sold later, she is an established artist who has paved the way for the triumphs (as the former Operación Triunfo contestants call them) enjoyed by today's youth are idolized: Lola Indigo, Amaia, Aitana…
You criticized Aitana for her dances and sensual lyrics. Do we still judge women who openly talk about their sexuality?
The problem isn't so much that she talks about sex, but that she takes license to want to change stages. We caught Aitana at a very young age and it's like we want Miley Cyrus to always be Hannah Montana. There are always people who don't want you to change. But who wants to be the same person all their life?
Did the same thing happen to you?
I immediately started singing “I will Give you”, “Dare” and “When you go”. I didn't have to switch from girl to woman, I went straight to the nougat.
But two decades have passed and I have the feeling that we continue to see her as “Spain’s darling”. Don't you feel that way?
Yes, my best relationship is with Spain. My best marriage is the one I have with the public. I get the best compliments when I go to the supermarket. People shout at me: “Beautiful, cheer up!” And they mean it. This makes me cry: the love of all the people who see you and don't take a photo of you to publish or write about you. Then I cry.
Team credits:
Photography: Santiago Belizon
Styling: Beatriz Machado
Make-up and hair: Fidel Fernández (Another Artists) for Chanel and Keune
Production: Cristina Serrano
Photo assistance: Angi Andreo
Styling assistant: Diego Serna
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