Jacques Romain Georges Brel was bornin Schaerbeek, Belgium, a suburb ofBrussels, on April 8, 1929. Jacques,whose father was co-owner of a card-board factory, grew up with his elderbrother Pierre in a rather austere familyatmosphere where his time was dividedbetween Catholic school and a localScout troop. At the age of 16 he beganto display the first signs of his artistic talent, forming his own theatre groupand writing a series of plays.Although young Jacques had to repeatthree school years, his writings wereoften read aloud by the teacher as amodel for the other students. About hischildhood, Brel said: “I had a childhoodwhere almost nothing happened. It wasnot rough at all...it was calm and inevitably morose.” Brel’s relatively calm youth was interrupted by the Second World War,which would devastate Belgium. Hespent his adolesence in Nazi-occupiedBrussels and this helped him seethrough the sanitized world of the bourgeoisie and the Catholic Church.When he turned 18, his father insistedthat he join the family business. How-ever, he had no interest and preferredthe arts, joining the Catholic humanistyouth organization, Franche Cordée,which put on shows in orphanages, hospitals and retirement homes. Ratherthan waiting to be called up by the army,Brel enlisted in the military in 1948. Hemet Thérèse (Miche) Michielsen atFranche Cordée and they married in1950. At the end of 1951 the couple'sfirst daughter, Chantal, was born. By 1952 he started writing songs, per-forming them at family get-togethers oron the Brussels cabaret circuit. Shockedby some of the lyrics and the violent, emotional performance of the songs, his family did not encourage Jacques to pursue a singing career.Ignoring them, Brel continued singingand songwriting and recorded his firstrecord in 1953. Impressed by this firstrecording, Jacques Canetti, an artistic director at the Philips recording label, invited Brel to Paris. Brel's family objected and threatened he would not

get a penny out of them if he went. Bythen, Miche had given birth to a seconddaughter, France, but undeterred Brelset out for Paris on his own. He brought with him a guitar and arepertoire of well-meaning but naivesongs reflecting his Catholic idealismwhich earned him the nickname of“l’abbe Brel” (Father Brel). In Paris, hestruggled to get his career off theground, and the only one of his earlysongs that survived into his later reper-toire was Ouand On N’a Que L’amour(When You Only Have Love).

Audience Guide2010-2011

Issue 3, January/February 2011IN THIS ISSUE

AUDIENCE GUIDEResearch/Writing by Justine Leonardfor ENLIGHTEN,Skylight Opera Theatre’s Education Program

Edited by Ray Jivoff414-299-4965rayj@skylightopera.comwww.skylightopera.com

The Music and Spirit of Jacques Brel: Still Intensely Alive and Wellfrom RFI Musique www.rfimusique.com and Chanson by Peter Hawkins

This production is proudly sponsored by:

Jacques Brel, 1953

The Brel Family

Original Production Conception and Translations

byEric Blau & Mort Shuman

Brel and Miche

In 1954 Brel took part in the "Grand Prixde la Chanson" and finished 27th out of28 competitors. The contest did haveone positive result - French star JulietteGréco heard Brel's song Ça Va Le Diable, which she performed at the pres-tigious Olympia Music Hall. Brel recorded his début album in Francein 1955 with the Philips label. At thispoint, the singer met Georges Pasquier,better known as Jojo, who became Brel'sclosest friend and manager. That sameyear, his wife and daughters joined himin Paris. Brel's second album, recorded in 1957,produced the hit single Quand On a QueL'amour (If We Only Have Love), whichwon the singer the "Grand Prix de l'Académie Charles Cros". The following year, for his third albumBrel teamed with François Rauber, aclassical pianist who felt a great

empathy with Brel's work and gave theyoung singer the formal musical traininghe was lacking and became responsiblefor his musical arrangements.At the end of 1958, Brel returned to theOlympia and this time he brought thehouse down, winning over the audiencewith an incredibly emotional perform-ance.For his fourth album, pianist GérardJouannest joined the team. It was thiscombination that produced the highlysuccessful recording, Ne Me Quitte Pasin 1959. Brel and Jouannest would col-laborate on an enormous number ofsongs which have become Brel classicsincluding Seul (Alone), Madeleine andLes Vieux (The Old Folks).

Brel embarked on a series of extensivetours, winning an ever-increasing num-ber of fans across France. Brel, who hadalways accompanied himself on the gui-tar, dropped the instrument from his actand concentrated entirely on his increas-ingly theatrical vocal performances. At the beginning of 1960, Brel, fueled bycopious amounts of alcohol, cigarettesand one-night stands, began a series ofinternational concerts from the Frenchprovinces to the USSR, the Middle Eastand the United States. Brel's concert at the Olympia in 1961was the turning point in his career. He

replaced Marlene Dietrich at the Parisianmusic hall, and the audience greeted hisshow with rapturous applause, while thecritics hailed him as the new star ofFrench chanson. After this phenomenal success, Brelbegan another gruelling world tour. Andalthough he was rocketing towards inter-national stardom at increasing speed, hewas already toying with the idea of calling a halt to his singing career.In 1962 Brel left his original record com-pany, Philips, to sign with Barclay andset up his own music publishing com-pany, Pouchenel. Brel's wife, Miche, became company director.In January 1964, Brel's father died andtwo months later the singer lost hismother. But Brel continued his prodi-gious output, releasing two new albums(one was a live recording of his October concert at the Olympia).

JACQUES BRELIS ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN PARIS

Audience Guide

In 1964, Brel discovered a new passionin life, aviation. This new skill wouldprove most useful when he went to livein the Marquesas Islands. After a courseof flying lessons, Brel bought himself asmall plane.At the end of 1965, after a five-week tourof the USSR, Brel performed atCarnegie Hall in New York. The Ameri-can press, in describing Brel's extraordi-nary stage charisma, dubbed him the"Magnetic Hurricane".Brel was growing increasingly weary ofhis star status and intense tour sched-ules, and in 1966 he shocked the worldby announcing that he was giving up hissinging career. The singer declared thathe had nothing more to give the musicworld and wished to devote more time toother projects.At the start of 1967, Brel gave a second,final performance at Carnegie Hall.While in New York he saw MAN OF LAMANCHA, the musical inspired by Cervantes' famous novel DON QUIXOTE. Immensely moved by the show, Brel decided to translate and perform the musical in Europe. Brel's version ofL'HOMME DE LA MANCHA premièred in

Brussels, with Brel as Don Quixote. Hisperformance was unanimously applauded. In 1967, Brel launched a new career inthe cinema, first as an actor in AndréCayatte’s film LES RISQUES DU MÉTIER,receiving enthusiastic reviews. In 1971,he made his directorial début, shootinghis own film, FRANTZ, with fellow musichall artist Barbara. At the end of 1971,Brel appeared in Claude Lelouch's filmL'AVENTURE C'EST L'AVENTURE. Whileshooting this film in the Caribbean, Brelmet and fell in love with Madly Bamy, ayoung actress and dancer. The singerwould spend the final years of his lifewith her. But by the beginning of 1973Brel, who was already aware that hewas ill with lung cancer, prepared a will,leaving everything to his wife Miche.Near the end of his life, Brel was devot-ing practically all his time and energy tosailing. In 1974, he underwent an opera-tion on his left lung. The following year,Jacques and Madly went to live in theMarquesas Islands. He returned to Brus-sels for medical examinations, but inspite of his doctors' advice that the tropi-cal climate was unsuitable for his lungs,he returned to the Marquesas.In 1977, Brel decided he would like torecord another album. Although he wasnow living thousands of miles away, hisrecords were still being bought by millions of fans. Brel had quit smoking bynow and, although he was in poorhealth, he was enthusiastic about gettingback to Paris to work with his collabora-tors François Rauber and GérardJouannest. When the new album ofsongs he had written in the Marquesaswas released on November 17, it wentdown in history as a national event, selling over a million copies in advance.On the day of the album’s release Breland Madly flew back to the Islands.In July 1978, Brel took a turn for theworse. He died of pulmonary embolismon October 9 and was buried on the island of Hiva-Oa near the tomb of theFrench painter Gauguin.Brel would go down in history as aunique artist. Few singers before orsince have expressed their emotions aspowerfully as he did through his music.His larger-than-life public persona madehim a cult figure. He struggled to win hispublic but when he did, they would

remain loyal long after his death. In spiteof his middle-class background, he wasa self-made man; he turned his back onthe security offered by his family, and rejected the comfort of a conventionalmarriage. He followed his romanticdreams, launching a career as a singer,becoming an aircraft pilot, a film actorand director and finally buying a yachtand sailing around the world, settling ona remote tropical island. All theseachievements are the stuff of dreams,yet Brel had the force of character tocarry them all out. That is the essence ofthe myth of Brel.In 1981 Brel’s daughter, France, set up the "Fondation Jacques Brel". The asso-ciation preserves Brel’s memory, promotes his work to the widest possibleaudience and donates funds to cancerresearch and childrens hospitals.

JACQUES BRELIS ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN PARIS

Audience Guide

JACQUES BRELIS ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN PARIS

Audience GuideJacques Brel Changes His Style-Two Primary Collaborators

After his initial success in Paris, JacquesBrel gradually changed from a Catholic-humanist troubadour, to an artist whosang stark songs about love, death andstruggling through life. His friendsGeorges Pasquier, Gerard Jouannesand Francois Rauber, influenced him towrite more complex music with diversethemes exploring love, society and spiritual concerns.

Gerard Jouannest would become Brel’smusical counterpart. He accompaniedhim on recordings and at concerts andthey would write many famous songs together. Jouannest, a French pianistborn in 1933, was admitted to the Con-servatoire National Superieur deMusique in Paris in 1946 studying to be-come a concert pianist. He had to aban-don that dream when his father died. Tosupport the family he turned to work incabarets where he met Brel and Francois Rauber, also from the NationalConservatory of Music.Jouannest was fascinated by the qualityof their songs and their interpretations.And soon the three men formed a lastingfriendship, a fusion of talents by whichFrench music would take on another

dimension. The Brel we know today wasborn from his collaborations withJouannest and Rauber. By the end of1968, Jouannest was accompanyingBrel on the stage and they began a Bohemian life of the two artists travelingthe roads, touring and strengtheningtheir friendship. Jouannest’s first musical contribution in1959 became one of Brel’s most popularsongs: Ne Me Quitte Pas. Brel, whocomposed on his guitar, had a melodyin his head that he couldn’t develop. Pianist Jouannest became the bridgethat enabled Brel to perfect the song thatwould become a huge success. Manywonders were born from the collabora-tion and friendship of these two excep-tional men: Brussels, Madeleine,Matilda, The Song of Jacky, Sons Of,The Song of Old Lovers and I'm Coming.

In nearly ten years, Jouannest wouldcompose songs for and with Brel. Thequality of these musical works reflectsthe classic collaboration of both artists,the words of one triggering the other’snotes, or vice versa. Their friendshipand loyalty were immutable, even untilBrel's death in 1978. With over two hun-dred and sixty works to his repertoire,Gerard Jouannest is a leading composerin the history of French song.

Francois Rauber,(above) a pianist, composer, arranger and conductorjoined Brel’s circle of friends and advi-sors in 1956. Rauber studied music atthe National Conservatoire and the Conservatoire de Paris. He was knownfor his work with chanson and he gaveBrel’s music the structure it was lacking. In 1979, he was awarded the GrandPrize for Light Symphonic Music. Duringthe 1980's and early 1990's, he workedextensively with Portuguese singer-songwriter Fernando Tordo and servedas arranger and conductor in some ofhis records. In 2003, he was awardedthe Chanson Française Grand Prize. Heserved as the music director of the 1975film JACQUE BREL IS ALIVE ANDWELL AND LIVING IN PARIS.

George Pasquier (above with Brel) wasone of Brel’s closest friends. Known asJojo, he not only was Brel’s driver, man-ager and right-hand man but his guide .Brel wrote the heart breaking song, Jojo,as tribute to Pasquier when he died.

Brel and Jouannest

JACQUES BRELIS ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN PARIS

Audience GuideMusic lovers are familiar with Englishversions of Brel’s The Port of Amsterdam,Seasons in the Sun and Quand on N'aQue L'amor or If We Only Have Love.His most frequently recorded song is NeMe Quitte Pas, (Don't Leave Me), thatsinger Rod McKuen freely translated asIf You Go Away. It has been recordedabout 400 times and in 22 different languages.Mort Shuman and Eric Blau translatedabout 30 Brel songs into English andcreated the Off-Broadway musical,JACQUES BREL IS ALIVE AND WELL ANDLIVING IN PARIS. The 1968 show becameone of the three longest-running Off-Broadway musicals in history. It featuredMort Shuman and Elly Stone, Blau’swife, in the original cast of four. In 2006, a new production opened Off-Broadway at the Zipper Theater. Whilethis revival used most of the originalBlau-Shuman translations, there weresignificant changes: the order of songswas rearranged, numbers were reorchestrated and some songs weredropped or added. The revival also in-cluded expanded staging and choreog-raphy. The acclaimed reinventedproduction was the longest running andmost successful revival of the show, running for more than a year.

Brooklyn-born Mort Shuman inherited apassion for art and music from his par-ents. He studied philosophy at school,but despite being accepted at City College of New York, Shuman opted fora career in music and began writingsongs. When he was barely 16, he met31-year-old Doc Pomus, a Brill Buildingsongwriter and blues singer. Pomus became a friend and mentor and the twobegan writing songs together despite the15-year age difference between them.

The pair signed with Hill and RangeSongs, a music publisher with a workingrelationship with Elvis Presley. From1958 through the mid-'60s, Pomus andShuman authored a great body of popsong hits including A Mess of Blues, Little Sister, Suspicion, Surrender andViva Las Vegas for Presley; You Are MyBaby for Ray Charles; A Teenager inLove for Dion; Can't Get Used to LosingYou for Andy Williams; This Magic Moment and perhaps the most memo-rable of them all, Save the Last Dancefor Me for The Drifters. Together, thesesongs sold more than 30 million records. Despite this success, Shuman left NewYork in the mid-'60s to travel and duringa visit to Paris, he discovered poet-singer, Jacques Brel. Returning to Amer-ica, he and writer Eric Blau collaboratedin translating Brel songs into English andcreating the successful revue.

Blau was introduced to the music ofJacques Brel by his wife, Elly Stone, acabaret performer, who was part of theoriginal cast of the revue in 1968. Blau was born on Manhattan's LowerEast Side in 1921 to Hungarian immi-grants. He attended the City College ofNew York, which he left before graduat-ing following an argument with a professor about William Shakespeare.Blau served in Europe during World WarII in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, wherehe wrote poems for French journals.After completing his military service, hefounded the journal “Masses and Main-stream,” and worked as a writer and inpublic relations. He was a ghostwriter forsports instruction booklets on behalf ofbasketball player Bob Cousy and baseball's Roger Maris. Together withcartoonist Roy Doty, he created THE ADVENTURES OF DANNY DEE, an earlyTV show for children broadcast in 1953.Shuman later returned to Paris to liveand embarked on a new career as arecording artist. Eventually, he becameone of France's most popular personali-ties, as both performer and songwriter.He has six gold albums and countlesshits to his credit, including Le Lac Ma-jeure, which became one of the mostsuccessful singles ever issued inFrance. He also created 15 film scores.He died in 1991.Blau died in Manhattan at age 87 in2009.

Mort Shuman and Eric Blau: Creators of JACQUES BREL IS ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN PARIS

Mort Shuman (1936-1991)

Eric Blau and Jacques Brel, 1968

JACQUES BRELIS ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN PARIS

Audience Guide

Jacques Brel is universally recognizedas one of the greatest modern day creators and interpreters of chanson. Chanson, lyric driven French song, is atradition that goes back to the MiddleAges. The troubadours of the twelfth and thir-teenth centuries are a well known exam-ple of the ancient origins of the form. Thesongs usually recounted the famousdeeds of heroes, legendary and semi-historical. The Song of Roland is themost famous, but in general the chan-sons are studied as literature since verylittle of their music survives.

French solo song developed in the late16th century. During the 17th century,other genres, generally accompanied bylute or keyboard, flourished. During the18th century, vocal music in France wasdominated by opera. Solo song underwent a renaissance in the 19thCentury with highly sophisticated worksinfluenced by the German Lieder.Chanson is, first of all, a form of popularmusic, which sometimes has links withits classical, “serious” counterpart.Closer still are its links with poetry. It isalso a form of theatre, where the interac-tion with an audience is a key element inthe experience. Today, the term chansonrefers to the tradition of popular songsby identifiable authors and composerswhich has existed since the late eighteenth century.

Aristide Bruant, made famous byToulouse Lautrec (poster at left) is thestarting point of the modern tradition ofchanson. He is the first singer-song-writer, the founder of an art form whichthrough his skill emerged from theanonymity of a folk-art, from the crafts-manship of the popular composer, thelyricist, the variety artist, to take on a dif-ferent status. Thanks to Bruant, chansonbecame a self contained, legitimate formof self-expression. The main feature of Bruant’s songs istheir recreation of a kind of lumpenprole-tariat drawn from the streets of Paris including drunks, thieves, pimps, prosti-tutes, tramps, laundresses, seam-stresses, struggling families and a wholecommunity. Each song tells a simplestory, with a tragic or comic conclusion,combining poetic language and slang.

In France "chanson" often refers to thework of more popular singers likeJacques Brel, Georges Brassens, ÉdithPiaf, Charles Aznavour, Barbara, LéoFerré and Juliette Greco.

Chanson is distinguished from the rest ofFrench "pop" music by following therhythm of the French language, ratherthan that of English, and thus is identifi-able as specifically French. In addition, itfollows the more demanding rules of typically French music when it comes tothe poetry and sophistication of lyrics.It seems that chanson is more closelybound up with the national identity ofFrance than it is in many other cultures,because it embodies some of the funda-mental elements of what it means to beFrench. In this respect it is a powerfulbut elusive component of French popularculture.

References: CHANSON, THE FRENCH SINGER-SONG-WRITER FROM ARISTIDE BRUANT TO THE PRESENT DAY by Peter Hawkins, 2000Wikipedia and guardian.co.uk

Chanson - the Art of Brel

Edith Piaf (1915-1963)

JACQUES BRELIS ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN PARIS

Audience GuideThe Skylight design team worked to create the right environment for JacquesBrel’s powerful music and messages.Their inspiration came from manysources, but two of the most importantwere Brassai, a Hungarian photographerwhose moody lighting captured thestreets of Paris and Joseph Cornell, aquirky New York artist who made the or-dinary extraordinary. Brassaï is the pseudonym of GyulaHalász (1899 –1984) a Hungarian photog-rapher, sculptor, and filmmaker who roseto fame in France. He was born inBrassó (Braşov), in south-east Transyl-vania, Austria-Hungary, now Romania. Atage three, his family moved to Paris fora year, while his father, a Professor ofLiterature, taught at the Sorbonne. As a young man, he studied painting andsculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts inBudapest, and in 1924 moved back toParis where he would live the rest of hislife. Living among the huge population ofartists in the Montparnasse Quarter, hetook a job as a journalist. Gyula Halász'sjob and his love of the city, whose streetshe often wandered late at night, led himto photography. Using the name of his birthplace, GyulaHalász went by the pseudonym "Bras-saï," which means "from Brasso." Helater wrote that photography allowed himto seize the Paris night and the beauty ofthe streets and gardens, in rain and mist.He captured the essence of the city, pub-lishing his first book of photographs in1933 titled PARIS DE NUIT (PARIS BYNIGHT). His great success resulted in hisbeing called "the eye of Paris" in anessay by his friend, writer Henry Miller. In addition to photos of the seedier sideof Paris, he also provided scenes fromthe life of the city's high society, its intel-lectuals, its ballet and the grand operas.Brassaï's photographs brought him inter-national fame.After 1961 when he stopped taking pho-tographs, Brassaï concentrated onsculpting in stone and bronze. Severaltapestries were made from his designsbased on his photographs of graffiti. Brassaï died in 1984 in the south ofFrance, and was interred in theCimetière du Montparnasse in Paris.

Visual Inspirations

1" Nosing Typ

2'-3 3/4"

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"8'

-2"

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-10"

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Kiosk

12'-0

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2" Spades Spaced

3 3/8" Apart Along

Perimeter

Research photo of Brel walking past akiosk covered in Brel advertisements.

Scenic design by Keith Pitts

Brassai photograph

Joseph Cornell (1903 – 1972) was anAmerican artist and sculptor, one of the pioneers and most celebrated exponentsof assemblage. Cornell, a self-taughtartist, could create poetry from the commonplace. His most characteristicart works were boxed assemblages cre-ated from found objects. In these simpleboxes, usually fronted with a glass pane,he arranged surprising collections ofphotographs, found objects and bric-à-brac in a way that combines the formalausterity of Constructivism with the livelyfantasy of Surrealism. Many of hisboxes, such as the famous Medici SlotMachine boxes, are interactive and canbe handled.

Cornell was born in Nyack, New York, toJoseph Cornell, a well-to-do designerand merchant of textiles. Both parentscame from socially prominent families ofDutch ancestry, long-established in NewYork State. He had no formal training inart, although he was extremely well-readand conversant with the New York artscene. He lived for most of his life in asmall house in a working-class area inNew York City, with his mother and hisyounger brother Robert, who was physi-cally challenged with cerebral palsy. Cornell became a highly regarded artisttowards the end of his career when hebegan to sell his boxes for significantsums after a 1948 solo show. His lastmajor exhibition was a show arrangedespecially for children, with the boxesdisplayed at child height and soft drinksand cake served at the opening party. Inthe 1960s, Cornell concentrated on making collages, and collaborated withseveral avant-garde filmmakers to makefilms that were evocative of moving collages. Cornell died of apparent heart failure in1972, a few days after his sixty-ninthbirthday.

JACQUES BRELIS ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN PARIS

Audience Guide

These walls sit on to

20'-0

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Factory Window

w/ Painted Out

"Glass"

Metal LadderWood Scaffolding

6' x 8' Sliding Door

Broadwa

Wooden Ladder

Scenic design by Keith Pitts

Medici Princess, 1948