Esther Borja Lima is a Cuban

Cubans

Cubans or Cuban people are the inhabitants or citizens of Cuba. Cuba is a multi-ethnic nation, home to people of different ethnic and national backgrounds...

 soprano

Soprano

A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...

.

Borja was trained in solfége

Solfege

In music, solfège is a pedagogical solmization technique for the teaching of sight-singing in which each note of the score is sung to a special syllable, called a solfège syllable...

 and music theory

Music theory

Music theory is the study of how music works. It examines the language and notation of music. It seeks to identify patterns and structures in composers' techniques across or within genres, styles, or historical periods...

 by Juan Elósegui, and in singing

Vocal pedagogy

Vocal pedagogy is the study of the art and science of voice instruction. It is used in the teaching of singing and assists in defining what singing is, how singing works, and how proper singing technique is accomplished....

 by Rubén Lepchutz. She graduated as a teacher in 1934, and began her career in 1935; that year she performed, with Ernesto Lecuona

Ernesto Lecuona

Ernesto Lecuona y Casado was a Cuban composer and pianist of Canarian father and Cuban mother, and worldwide fame. He composed over six hundred pieces, mostly in the Cuban vein, and was a pianist of exceptional quality....

 on piano, at the National Theatre (now the Gran Teatro de La Habana), and at the Auditorium Amadeo Roldan

Amadeo Roldán

Amadeo Roldán y Gardes was a Cuban composer and violinist. Roldán was born in Paris to a Cuban mulatta and a Spanish father...

. The same year she sang the waltz

Waltz

The waltz is a ballroom and folk dance in time, performed primarily in closed position.- History :There are several references to a sliding or gliding dance,- a waltz, from the 16th century including the representations of the printer H.S. Beheim...

 Damisela encantadora in the operetta

Operetta

Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...

 Lola Cruz by Lecuona. Her voice was described as a "beautiful mezzo-soprano

Mezzo-soprano

A mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above...

 with clear diction and a good feel for melody".

At the time Borja started her career, and for years after, Rita Montaner

Rita Montaner

Rita Montaner, born Rita Aurelia Fulcida Montaner y Facenda , was a Cuban singer, pianist, actress and star of stage, film, radio and television. In Cuban parlance, she was a vedette , and she was well known in Mexico City, Paris, Miami and New York, where she performed, filmed and recorded on...

 was the leading stage musical star in Cuba. However, Montaner (who was also a fine pianist) gradually shifted her career from operatic-style singing towards Afro-Cuban character roles and films, and then began some remarkable radio shows with biting humour and political satire. Borja, on the other hand, remained primarily a singer, and later took over some of the soprano parts that Montaner had previously dominated.

Borja made her first overseas tour to Argentina

Argentina

Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

 in 1936 with Lecuona, his sister Ernestina, and Bola de Nieve

Bola de Nieve

Bola de Nieve , born Ignacio Jacinto Villa, was a successful Cuban singer-pianist and songwriter, whose round, black face earned him the nickname by which he was always known....

. The quartet made a film, Adiós, Buenos Aires, in 1937, and Esther stayed there until 1943. From her new base in the Argentine, Borja sang and performed zarzuela

Zarzuela

Zarzuela is a Spanish lyric-dramatic genre that alternates between spoken and sung scenes, the latter incorporating operatic and popular song, as well as dance...

s by Lecuona and other composers, and toured Chile

Chile

Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...

, Peru

Peru

Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....

, Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

 and Uruguay

Uruguay

Uruguay ,officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay,sometimes the Eastern Republic of Uruguay; ) is a country in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area...

. In 1943 she returned to Cuba to work in concerts organized by Eliseo Grenet

Eliseo Grenet

Eliseo Grenet Sánchez was a Cuban pianist and a leading composer/arranger of the day. He composed music for stage shows and films, and some famous Cuban dance music. Eliseo was one of three musical brothers, all composers, the others being Emilio and Ernesto...

, and left again to go to New York. There she appeared with Lecuona in the Steinway Hall

Steinway Hall

Steinway Hall is the name of buildings housing concert halls, showrooms and sales departments for Steinway & Sons pianos. The first Steinway Hall was opened 1866 in New York City. Today, Steinway Halls and Steinway-Häuser are located in world cities such as New York City, London, Hamburg, Berlin,...

 until Sigmund Romberg

Sigmund Romberg

Sigmund Romberg was a Hungarian-born American composer, best known for his operettas.-Biography:Romberg was born as Siegmund Rosenberg to a Jewish family in Gross-Kanizsa during the Austro-Hungarian kaiserlich und königlich monarchy period...

 put her under contract to appear with his orchestra at the Carnegie Hall

Carnegie Hall

Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....

. She completed five tours of the U.S.A. with this band. Eventually, she returned to Cuba, and continued her career in operettas, zarzuelas and on radio. Her last appearances in the lyric theatre

Musical theatre

Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...

 were in Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

 and Barcelona

Barcelona

Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...

in 1953.

For twenty years on Cuban television, from 1961, she fronted the show Álbum de Cuba, and sang in venues throughout Cuba.

CDs

All CDs are compilations of earlier recordings.

Canta a varias voces 1991.

Rapsodia de Cuba 1992.

Musica de Lecuona 1993.

Canciones cubanas 1994.

Longina 1999.

Canta a dos, tres y cuatro voces 2004.