Singer Guitarricadelafuente knows pop stardom. Acting in 'La Bola Negra' was a challenge

This is read by an automated voice.Please report any issues or inconsistencies here.

See more from the L.A.Times in Google Search.

Set us as preferred Running his hand through his long, curly locks during a recent video call, the one-named Spanish musician Guitarricadelafuente confesses he is still coming down from the ecstasy of his sold-out show in Madrid a couple of weeks ago.It was the last performance of his tour and the unofficial kickoff of a new Hollywood adventure.That night, his booming career as a folk-pop musician and his burgeoning future as an actor came together on stage.

The 29-year-old Guitarrica (the Aragonese word for “small guitar”), whose real name is Álvaro Lafuente Calvo, performed the original song “La Nieve” (The Snow) for the first time in front of an audience — more than 15,000 people.He wrote the sorrowful track for the stirring historical queer epic “La Bola Negra” (opening today), in which he also makes his acting debut in a substantial role as Sebastian, a trumpeter forced to join the fascist-aligned National Army during the 1930s Spanish Civil War in order to survive.“It was such an incredibly moving moment with the whole stadium singing along, and we even showed images from the movie,” he says in Spanish over Zoom, holding up his cellphone while walking around his home in Barcelona.“La Bola Negra” has already become a box-office phenomenon in Spain.

Entertainment & Arts Co-directors Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo (the duo is also known as Los Javis) alongside co-writer Alberto Conejero devised “La Bola Negra” as a triptych of interlaced stories.The ambitious multi-character tale combines elements from Federico García Lorca’s unfinished title play, about a young gay man blackballed from joining a casino’s membership, and Conejero’s 2013 work “La Piedra Oscura,” which traces the romance between Lorca and actor Rafael Rodríguez Rapún.In a fiction built from these narratives, Gui...