Barbara

Barbara

Birth : 1930-06-09, Paris, France

Death : 1997-11-24

History

Monique Andrée Serf (9 June 1930 – 24 November 1997), known as Barbara, was a French singer. She took her stage name from her grandmother, Varvara Brodsky, a native of Odessa, Russian Empire (current-day Ukraine). Barbara became a famous cabaretière in the late 1950s in Paris, known as La Chanteuse de minuit ('the midnight singer'), before she started composing her own tracks, which brought her to fame. Her most famous songs include "Dis, quand reviendras-tu?" (1962), "Ma plus belle histoire d'amour" (1966) and "L'Aigle noir" (1970), the latter of which sold over 1 million copies in just twelve hours. She was buried at the Cimetière parisien de Bagneux, adjacent to the Paris Métro station named in her honour. The station Barbara opened 13 January 2022, on a southern extension of Line 4. Born on Rue Brochant in Paris to a Jewish family, Barbara lived in northwestern Paris as a child. She then lived in Roanne from 1938 and Tarbes from 1941. Barbara was 13 years old when she had to go into hiding during the German occupation of France in World War II. Her family was hidden by the family of conductor Jean-Paul Penin from 1943 to 1945, first in Préaux and then in Saint-Marcellin. After the war ended, Barbara's family came back to Paris in 1946, on Rue Vitruve in the 20th arrondissement. Her childhood dream was to become a pianist, but a problem with her hand made such a career impossible. To console her, her parents agreed to pay for singing lessons. A neighbourhood music professor, who heard her sing, took an interest in helping her develop her talents. She was given vocal lessons and taught to minimally play the piano; eventually she enrolled at the École Supérieure de Musique in 1947. Money was a problem and she gave up her musical studies in 1948. She was first recruited at the Théâtre Mogador, before a stint in Belgium, where she performed under the stage name Barbara Brodi. Late 1951, she returned to Paris to audition at La Fontaine des Quatre Saisons, a popular cabaret in the 7th arrondissement. However, as she failed to become a permanent cast member, she returned to Brussels. In 1955, she returned to Paris; with more luck, she began to sing at various cabarets throughout the capital, with a growing audience. She was deeply scarred by the war and her family's plight. The feelings of emptiness experienced during childhood showed in her songs, particularly "Mon Enfance". She said in her uncompleted autobiography, Il était un piano noir (assembled from notes found after her death), that her father sexually abused her when she was 10 and she hated him for that. He later abandoned the family. A tall person, Barbara dressed in black as she sang melancholy songs of lost love. From 1950 to 1951, after her father's desertion of her family, she lived in Brussels, where she became part of an active artistic community, before visiting Charleroi, where she befriended many artists. Her painter and writer friends took over an old house, converting it into workshops and a concert hall with a piano where she performed the songs of Édith Piaf, Juliette Gréco and Germaine Montero. However, her career evolved slowly and she struggled constantly to eke out a living. ... Source: Article "Barbara (singer)" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Profile

Barbara

Movies

Mitterrand, président culturel
Self (archive footage)
On the occasion of the fourty years anniversary of François Mitterand's election, a look back to the relationship between the President and artists, from admiration to manipulation.
Barbara, chansons pour une absente
Self (archive footage)
Bleu, blanc, rose
Self (archive footage)
"Homosexuality, this painful problem "... It was thirty years ago, the title of a program of Ménie Grégoire! But what has happened since the seventies, when France was transformed and the gay movement emerged? For gays and lesbians, thirty years of fights, hopes and despairs, thirty years of parties, sufferings and mournings, victories and emancipation. Thirty revolutionary years, pink and black, on which Yves Jeuland has examined, in an approach that is at once documentary, historian and ethnographer. First part: "Red years" (1971/1979) "Pink years" (1979/1984) Second part "Black years" (1983/1991) "Rainbow years" (1992/2002)
Barbara en concert : Pantin 81
Self
Franz
Léonie
In a French seaside town, at a boarding house for civil servants recovering from surgery and maladies, the six male residents' lives change dramatically when two women arrive: Catherine, lively, sexually liberated, willing to kiss, dance, and sleep with the men, and Leonie, reserved, formal, conservative. Leonie finds herself attracted to Leon, a Belgian who was a mercenary in Katanga in 1964, wounded and carrying psychological scars as well. The other men continually play practical jokes on Leon, some of them cruel. As Leon courts Leonie, his horrid mother brings him emotional distress as do his memories of war. Can the two of them get past these obstacles?
As Far as Love Can Go
Barbara
The boyfriend of Isabelle has just committed suicide. Therefore Isabelle roams the streets of Paris until she decides to change her life radically and leave the city. She travels to the coast where she meets a young history professor on the beach...