Guestposter Mark has an update on Juliette Gréco this summer:
Juliette Gréco does not do retirement. ‘Retraite, c’est un terme militaire pour moi’ she retorts. And she can suddenly lose 40 years, as here at the Festival de Ramatuelle on the Côte d’Azur on 7 August.
At the end of a typically sharp performance of Leo Ferré’s ‘Jolie Môme’, the white light on her fades and for a second she loses four decades from her face – looking not 86 but perhaps 44, La Grande Sophie’s age today. Freeze the Youtube film and click forward slowly from 2min 42sec and what no still photograph could capture is on Filles Sourires.
Juliette also sang ‘La Javanaise’, and we can see the stress that caused her to retire after an hour suffering from heat stroke, as reported in ‘Le Figaro’ the next day.
In her heyday JG only sang for 45 minutes plus encore. So to perform for hour in August heat would tax anyone at 26, let alone 86. Yet a week later she was back on stage at the Festival Musicalarue de Luxey, in Les Landes.
One impressive yet little-known Gréco song, difficult to do on stage because it needs an orchestra, is now on the web : ‘Et là, t’y crois’, from a 1993 album. The magnificent arrangement of Etienne Roda-Gill and Julien Clerc’s lyric is by Jean Claude Petit. The lyrics are not long, but stretch wonderfully for 4 minutes. I have used my Youtube channel to put them into two comments boxes below the Youtube screen picture.