After returning to Argentina in 1919, Enrique Telémaco Susini started working on the conversion of an old circus site into the Teatro Coliseo theater. Together with his friends, he started planning for a radio transmission from there, strongly supported by the two Italian owners, Faustino da Rossa and Walter Mocchi.
August 27, 1920 Wagner broadcast live on radio from Buenos Aires.
During 1920, while the group was working on the project, news reached them of Guglielmo Marconi's successful broadcast of a concert of Dame Nellie Melba in Chelmsford that had taken place on June 15. Even though it was somewhat of a disappointment that their broadcast would not be the world's first, the preparations continued at a rapid pace.
Radio Argentina Pioneers - The four Locos de la Azotea
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On August 27, they were finally ready. The theatre was showing the opera Parsifal by Richard Wagner. Susini and his coworkers had set up a 5W transmitter on the roof using a RS-5 Telefunken tube, operating in 350m, along with a wire antenna connected to the dome on top of a neighbouring building. To pick up the sound in the theatre, they used a microphone originally designed to aid people with hearing loss.
Around 8:30 pm, Susini himself took the microphone and inaugurated regular radio broadcast service in Argentina with the words:
Señoras y señores, la Sociedad Radio Argentina les presenta hoy el Festival Sacro de Ricardo Wagner, Parsifal, con la actuación del tenor Maestri...(Ladies and gentlemen, the Radio Argentina Society today presents you the [opera] Parsifal by Richard Wagner, featuring the tenor Maestri...)
The transmission continued for about three hours and was received as far as Santos in Brazil, where it was picked up by a ship's radio operator.
The number of listeners was limited, since the crystal set radios used at the time were rare and difficult to operate, requiring tedious fine-tuning of a lead glass crystal and installation of a wire antenna several meters long. But the newspaper La Razón published a raving review, and even president Hipólito Yrigoyen commended Susini and his group for their accomplishment.