Cabaret Barbara

Béatrice Agenin gathers actors from all generations to step into the world of this exceptional artist. With their contrasting voices and temperaments, they sing this body of work marked by the personality of the artist Barbara. Her physique and unique timbre, with a phrasing that verged on chant, remain forever associated with the haunting melodies she composed. A dip into an immense repertoire in which we discover songs of youth full of yearning for love, but also funny, spirited pieces and the more profound compositions of the mature years.

Barbara, the author
Monique Serf, known as Barbara (1930-1997), was an author, composer and performing artist born in Paris into a Jewish family. After the upheavals of the war years, she began studying opera in Paris. She made her debut in cabarets in Brussels (Le Cheval Blanc) and Paris (La Rose rouge, Chez Moineau, L’Écluse) and then her breakthrough came with performances at Bobino and her first album, Barbara chante Barbara in 1965. A prolific career ensued, interspersed with collaborations with other greats of chanson (Brassens, Moustaki and Brel). Inseparable from her black piano, Barbara created a symbiotic and atypical relationship with her audience, creating an appeal that crossed generations. She built up a repertoire reflecting an intimate and sensitive view of the world, now enshrined among the classics. In the 1990s became an activist in the fight against AIDS.

Béatrice Agenin, the director
An actress and director, Béatrice Agenin was a pensionnaire and then a sociétaire of the Comédie-Française from 1974 to 1984. She has recently directed Lee Blessing’sIndependence andGoing to St. Ives, Molière’s The Learned Ladies, and Marivaux’s The Test and Les Sincères. For this cabaret, she wishes to focus on the poetry of Barbara’s lyrics and the stories, everyday emotions and small pleasures of life contained in her songs. By having these words resonate in the intimacy of the Studio-Théâtre we return to the Barbara of the early days, those of the cabarets, before she became the immense, indispensable icon, revealing, behind the melancholy, a brighter side to the work of the lady in black.