Description
Mireille Mathieu
Mathieu began her career by participating in an annual singing contest in Avignon called On Chante dans mon Quartier (We sing in my neighborhood). Photos depict the affair as rather drab with a cheap curtain and one projector light. The stage was only twenty feet square, and the singer had to share it with a large piano and musicians. One cannot help but notice the large, boisterous, and mostly young audience. The judges sat at a table in front of and below the elevated stage. Anyone who signed the contract in the weeks before the show was allowed to sing. Talent scouts made this a worthwhile event for singers within hundreds of kilometers to participate in.
Mireille’s private singing lessons were by Madame Laure Collière, who was also a piano teacher in Avignon. Self-described as very stubborn in her autobiography, she wrote about singing love songs that the audience thought were inappropriate for a young girl, thus losing to Michèle Torr in 1962 when she sang “Les cloches de Lisbonne” at the first contest, and losing again in 1963 singing Édith Piaf’s “L’Hymne à l’amour.” In 1964, though, she won the event with another Piaf song: “La Vie en rose.”
Her win was rewarded with a free trip to Paris, and a pre-audition for the televised talent show Jeu de la Chance (Game of Luck), where amateur singers competed for audience and telephone votes. Her participation and train fare were arranged by Raoul Colombe, the deputy mayor of Avignon. Accompanied by a pianist at the studio, and dressed in black like Piaf, she sang two Piaf songs to the audition judges and left dispirited. Non-French cannot hear it, but Parisians at the studio made fun of her Provençal accent, and her dyslexia scrambled words. For example, her sister and current manager Monique, is called “Matite” because Mireille couldn’t pronounce “petite” as a child.
Track List
1 Un jour tu reviendras (Ennio Morricone/Maria Travia/Alain Lacour)
2 J’oublie la pluie et le soleil (Ennio Morricone/Sergio Bardotti/Bernard Raduszinsky)
3 La califfa (Ennio Morricone/Alberto Bevilacqua)
4 L’éblouissante lumière (Ennio Morricone/Michel Jourdan)
5 Il ne reste plus rien (Ennio Morricone/Giusseppe/Patroni Griffi/Carlo Garrunchio/Bernard Raduszinsky)
6 Je me souviens (Ennio Morricone/Bernard Raduszinsky)
7 La donna madre (Ennio Morricone/Alberto Bevilacqua)
8 Da quel sorriso che non ride piu’ (Ennio Morricone/Sergio Badotti)
9 La Marche de Sacco et Vanzetti (Ennio Morricone/Georges Moustaki)
10 Mélodie (Ennio Morricone/Bruno Lauzi/Pierre Delanoé)
11 Pas vu, pas pris (Ennio Morricone/Maurice Vidalin
12 Mon ami de toujours (Ennio Morricone/Vline Buggy)
13 Nata Libera (Ennio Morricone/Gianfranco Baldazzi/Sergio Bardotti)
14 Quando Verranno I Giorni (Ennio Morricone/Piero Piccioni)
Video: Mireille Mathieu – Il Ne Reste Plus Rien (D’Amore Sie Muore) 1972
