In 1943, the Caracas population did not reach half a million people. President Isaías Medina Angarita, fulfilling Bolívar's mandate, purchased the 164.000 hectares of the Hacienda Ibarra, with the purpose of establishing the University City of Caracas there.
On November 15, while some people from Caracas were on the tram reading El Morrocoy Azul heading to the Rialto and Principal cinemas to see Doña Bárbara with María Félix and Julián Soler, students were rehearsing for the first time at the second headquarters of the Central University of Venezuela , located from Stock Exchange to San Francisco.
They did it under the aegis of maestro Antonio Estévez, an experienced student of Vicente Emilio Sojo, who was the creator of the Composition and Declamation Chair at the José Ángel Lamas School of Music (Santa Capilla School), where madrigals, songs were born. choirs and the Nationalist School. They rehearsed the arrangement of Juan Bautista Plaza del Gloria al bravo pueblo. Estévez taught the soprano and alto voices to the girls, Inocente Carreño was left with the tenors and Antonio Lauro with the baritones and basses. That day the UCV University Choir was born.
The night of May 19, 1944 – while a train from Hungary entered the Polish concentration camp of Auschwitz, one of the sites where the Nazis carried out the extermination of thousands of Russians, communists, gypsies, the sick and Jews, a genocide which the Germans of the Third Reich called the “final solution” – in our country, the Orfeón Universitario gave its first concert at the Municipal Theater of Caracas.
29 sopranos, 13 contraltos, 21 tenors, 14 baritones and 13 basses, sang, directed by Antonio Estévez, the National Anthem, the Gaudeamus igitur (Let us rejoice therefore), considered the international university anthem; For the blonde goat of Vicente Emilio Sojo; Cantilena pastoril and El curruchá, both by Juan Bautista Plaza; Aragüeño song; Oligarchs tremble; The change; This serene night; White dove; Saint Peter; Fúlgida luna, and Song of Youth by Dmitri Shostakovich with arrangements by Antonio Estévez. Tenor Gustavo Rodríguez Amengual becomes the first soloist in the history of the group.
Since that beginning, the peasants who are on land always sing, the sailors who are at sea and the creative powers of the people celebrate a cappella or accompanied by a cuatro, they proudly throw singing staves into the wind and carry, like militiamen, to every corner of the world his infinite song of peace.
