Gloria Aura at the Los Metro Awards at Centro Cultural del Bosque, Mexico, 2022 (Photo credit should read Carlos Tischler / Eyepix Group/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
BY Alejandro Feregrino-. When Emilio Estefan decided to sign her to a three-year contract in the early 2000s to establish her as a singer in Miami, Glory Aura He thought he was facing the biggest opportunity of his life.
Estefan, a Cuban-nationalized American, is one of the most influential producers of Spanish music, with two Grammy Awards and six Latin Grammys in his career. He has produced works by singers such as Shakira, Ricky Martin and Thalía, among others.
A career on the rise
Gloria Aura is the daughter of music producer and composer Kiko Campos, who has collaborated with many music greats including Rubén Blades, Alejandro Fernández and Natalia Lafourcade.
Gloria Aura at the Pepsi Center WTC in Mexico City in 2021 (Photo by Victor Chavez/Getty Images)
Her mother is Gloria Mayo, an actress and former beauty queen who made a career in producing in the 1990s. It was in one of her programs called “La hora de los chavos” that Gloria became famous and took part in more than 150 pieces of music.
After recording two albums that went gold in Mexico, Gloria caught the attention of Estefan, already known as “The Midas King of Music in Spanish”. What could go wrong?
He moved to Miami and began recording a new project that never saw the light of day. Reality set in, because in those years Latin music was all about urban sounds.
“We’re talking about 2005 when we heard Don Omar and Daddy Yankee and that’s what the Miami record companies signed,” Aura said in a recent interview with the media in Mexico.
“Sometimes the situation can get a little tabloid, but when I made the decision to give up my singing career and devote myself more to musical theater and acting, I signed a contract with a producer (Estefan) that enabled me to and I spent three months years without being able to move from there, but he really didn’t do it with malicious intent or fraud.
Aura recently offered an interview to TV y Novelas, in which the interviewer assured that Estefan was “frustrated” with her career as a singer. But she doesn’t really see it that way because she doesn’t want Emilio Estefan to be portrayed as a villain in this story.
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“He just didn’t know where to go in Miami with my pop music when they were just doing Urban. It was definitely a moment where there was no way to move forward, I couldn’t get out of that contract either because there were a lot of things that were holding him down and Finally they blocked my music career there“.
But that doesn’t mean that her producer at the time didn’t help her.
“Emilio gave me a job hosting a show on Telemundo. I was on the air for two years with a show called Frecuencia that came out every Saturday.”
“Changed the course of my life”
Unable to break out of this contract, Gloria Aura had to wait three years to return to Mexico and start over, but with a new goal: “I made the decision to focus on musical theater, which is also one of the biggest Dreams was what I wanted to achieve.”
Gloria Aura in the musical “Amor Eterno” at Teatro San Rafael, Mexico, 2017 (Photo by Luis Ortiz/Clasos/LatinContent via Getty Images)
From there, Gloria wasted no time and began participating in high-profile musical productions such as Mamma Mía!, Cats, Marta Has a Pacemaker, and Lies: the Musical.
Gloria Aura in the musical “Mamma Mia!” at the TELMEX Theater in Mexico, 2009 (Photo by Mario Castillo/Jam Media/LatinContent via Getty Images)
He also returned to television, appearing in various soap operas including La heredad, Por amar sin ley and Qué le pasa a mi familia.
Aura doesn’t blame Emilio Estefan for the abrupt end to his singing careeralthough he acknowledges that this contract was final for his career.
“It changed the course of my life forever. However, I pushed my career forward as best I could and knocked on doors by my side.