Karina
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Karina, (born in Lima, Peru, November 19, 1968) is a pop-ballad singer and actress from Venezuela.
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[edit] Early Years
Born as Cynthia Karina Moreno Elias, she is the fourth out of five siblings of a Peruvian sephardic Jewish family that settled in Venezuela when she was just one year old. She speaks Hebrew, Spanish and English.
Her passion for music started when she was eight years old, when she started to take piano lessons. When she was in High School she was the secretary for festivities and culture, organising Israeli folk dances in which she also sang and danced, plus home and family performances of Barbra Streisand.
Despite her muscial leanings, it wasn't until she started college to study journalism at Universidad Católica Andrés Bello that she realised her true calling as a singer. Her first steps in her artistic career were when she participated in the theatre show "El Taller del Orfebre", base on the life of Pope John Paul II, singing "Zapatos de Tacon Alto", a song that made people wonder who she was and awakening the interest in her talent on stage.
[edit] The beginning of her career
In 1984 she signed a contract with the local label Rodven, with which she recorded in (1985) her first album, Amor a Millon, which produced hits such as "Se Como Duele" and "A Quien", making her widely known in Venezuela and the rest of Latin America. Apart from that, the song "Sé cómo duele" was the opening song of Venevisión's soap opera "Carmin".
[edit] Her stardom
After Amor a Millon, in 1987, she recorded her second album, Sin máscara, confirming her status as a serious singer not just in Venezuela, but in Mexico, the country that turned out to be her launchpad as a music star. That same year, she was nominated in six categories of the Ronda Music Awards in Venezuela, winning Best Female Breakthrough, Best soap opera song ("Se Como duele"), Best Videoclip ("A Quien"), Best-selling album of the year ("Amor a Millon") and also Rudy LaScala (writer and composer of "Se Como Duele"), won an award for Best Composer of the Year. Karina has not only demonstrated her talent on stage but also on television. In 1988 she has the leading role in the successful telenovela Alba Marina, broadcasted by Venevision, with Xavier, Johnny y Rene, who formed the group Proyecto M (former members of the Puerto Rican band Menudo) and the Venezuelan stars Elluz Peraza and Daniel Alvarado.
That same year she also won two Ronda Music Awards, one for Best Young Female Singer, and another for Best Videoclip ("La Noche es Magica", composed by the former Mecano member Nacho Cano)
In (1989), she recorded another album, Desde mi sueño, which portrayed a professionally evolved Karina. With Desde Mi Sueño, Karina made her debut as a composer with the songs “Lamento de la Jungla" and "Soni". She also made hits out of the songs "Desde mi Sueño", "No Puedo Vivir Sin Amor", "En el Amor" and "No Se".
In 1990, however, she left her music career to pursue other ambitions.
[edit] Second chance
On September 3, 1993, Karina took her second breath and made a comeback at the Miss Venezuela beauty pageant, in which she introduced her fourth album, Esta es mi vida, and took the audience by surprise again with a new image and style. In this album, she composed the songs "Esta es mi vida" and "Quiero que estés aquí".
In 1995, she came back to Venevision and took the leading role again in a telenovela, "Pecado de amor", with the Venezuelan star Víctor Camara, and in 1996 she launched her fifth album, "Renacer". In 1998, with a new image and style, she launched her sixth album, Karina, which included a dance version of Amanda Miguel's hit "El me mintió", which is a classic of the late 70s and early 80s in Latin American Music.
[edit] Marriage and a new family
Karina married on June 21, 1998 Marcello Azevedo, a Brazilian jewish entrepreneur, in a religious ceremony broadcasted by Venevision. They have a daughter, Yasha Marcela, who was born in mid-1999. On June 15, 2006 her second daughter, Hanna, was born.
[edit] Four years later
Years after her huge success with her image of good girl with a warm smile, she made a comeback on June 13, 2002, declaring to the newspaper Ultimas Noticias that she missed singing and acting very much. She also worked as her husband's representant, an idea she just came across; she understood he needed help and she started doing it with no previous experience while he continued creating and composing.
In July 2004, she presents her show "Intimamente Karina" in which she performed acoustic verions of her hits, but on October of that same year, she recorded another album, with which she expected to return to all the success she experienced in the 80s. The album Siempre Karina was introduced slowly in pubs and clubs and later in 2005 it was officially launched. This album was produced by her busband Marcello Azevedo, producer of other Latin American singers such as Chayanne and Paulina Rubio. This album contained new versions of her hits like "Se Como Duele", "Salvame" and "A Quien", plus seven new songs, among which "Sin Ti" was widely listened in Latin America and she recently launched another single, named "Borrón y Cuenta Nueva"
[edit] Comeback
Her comeback to the stage was on April 30, 2005 in Lia Bermudez Arts Center in Maracaibo, where she delighted the attendees with her voice during more than an hour and a half. Nine months later, she returned to Mexico, where she currently participates as one of the judges-teachers in the Televisa reality show Cantando por un sueño.
