Fly Fly Fly: FLY / 0314

Saturday 22 May 2010

FLY / 0314

4 comments:

White Flower said...: Adorei!
Que voz! Que voz!
............................
A slim woman with short hair and strikingly dark eyes who always appeared on stage dressed in black, Barbara belonged to the tradition of French-language singers like Jacques Brel, Georges Brassens and Leo Ferre for whom music was to a large measure a vehicle for poetry, sometimes humorous, more often nostalgic or even tragic.

Barbara, whose real name was Monique Serf, began her career in the 1950's performing songs by Brel and Brassens, but she made her name in the 1960's with her own songs, songs that remain popular to this day, among them ''L'Aigle Noir'' (''Black Eagle''), ''Ma plus belle histoire d'amour, c'est vous'' (''You are my most beautiful love story''), ''Il Pleut sur Nantes'' (''It's Raining in Nantes'') and ''Gottingen'.'

Barbara was born on June 9, 1930, in Paris. She studied the piano and voice as a teen-ager, but she dropped out of the Paris Music Conservatory to make her own career as a singer when she was only 19. Working in small theaters in Paris and Brussels, she made her first record in 1957. But it was in the early 1960's, with her own songs, that she joined Edith Piaf and Juliette Greco as a Left Bank favorite.

Her career peaked in the late 1960's and 70's, but she continued to draw large crowds to her concert series at Paris theaters, among them the Chatelet in 1987 and 1993 and the Mogador in 1990. In 1986, she directed a musical, ''Lily Passion'', starring Gerard Depardieu. From 1987, she also became involved in the battle against AIDS, distributing condoms at her concerts and visiting the ailing in hospital.

Between 1980 and 1996, she produced no new records. She also announced her retirement from the stage in March 1994.

- in The New York Times -; 22 May 2010 at 23:40
Fly said...: Uma das ENORMES vozes dos últimos 50 anos. Ao nível da Edith Piaf e do Jacques Brel. Lametavelmente muito pouco divulgada e conhecida.
Fantástica.; 22 May 2010 at 23:48
tsiwari said...: Très bonne cette chanteuse.

Malhereusemente, pas très connue...

Merci bien, Fly.

À bientôt.; 23 May 2010 at 19:52
Tiago Carvalho said...: muito bom. Não conhecia. Obrigado; 23 May 2010 at 21:50

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