FRENCH CHANTEUSE Caroline Moreau comes to the Town Hall Theatre next week with her compelling new show Amours toujours etc... in which she applies her powerful vocal sensibility to a range of fascinating and eclectic material – some new, some familiar – which she will sing in French.
En Irlande
In this gutsy and vibrant show, Moreau will perform from the rawer side of the chanson tradition, unearthing traditional French folk songs and sea-shanties. She will also revisit some of the masterpieces of chanson that she has made her own – including her fish-guts’n’sawdust rendition of Jacques Brel’s ‘Amsterdam’ and her unstoppable interpretation of ‘Poinconneur des Lilas’ by the ‘uncle of the punk generation’, Serge Gainsbourg.
Bonded by themes of love, desire, and death and introducing a carnival of colourful characters from revolutionary partisans to ticket-punchers, these songs will allow Moreau to showcase her formidable vocal talents.
Always a unique theatrical presence, here she moves even further from the feather-boa-and-fishnets image of the ‘French cabaret’ scene, plunging into an altogether earthier and edgier place.
Moreau, who will be joined by Oleg Ponomarev on violin and Fintan Gilligan on guitar, will also treat the audience to numbers by Django Reinhardt and Astor Piazzola .With her unique blend of humorous patter and astonishing vocal range, Moreau offers a show that will delight the senses, lift the spirits and excite the imagination.
Moreau has been wowing Irish audiences since 2002, when she took over Bewley’s Cabaret Theatre in a haze of heavily accented patter and superb showmanship. Her show Crime Passionnel was delivered with passionate conviction and became a sell-out in weeks.
Since then she has performed both as a solo artist and in a double act with acclaimed gypsy violinist Ponomarev in venues all across Ireland, Britain, France, and Spain. Her 2005 album Paris Is Burning received four stars in The Irish Times and she has also featured on RTE Radio’s series, Blue Of The Night.
La belle France
Moreau grew up in the north of France, a region rich in popular culture: danse musette played on the accordion, mussels, fried potatoes and beer.
She spent a lot of her time in the dark and forgotten music archives in Montmartre, seeking out the lost musical gems that are rarely sung anymore. She felt the best way to resurrect the songs, was to sing them directly to the public, by taking them to the street.
She first came to Ireland in 1999 when she performed as singer and accordionist with a play called The Nude Who Painted Back. She has since made Ireland her home and, fittingly enough, it was ‘l’amour’ that prompted her to relocate here.
“I was invited to play accordion for some friends,” she tells me, “and in the audience there was this particular Irish guy who saw me. Afterwards we met and we’re still together today with two kids!”
Another fateful meeting and fruitful partnership for Moreau has been that with gypsy violinist Oleg Ponomarev. They first met in 2003 and discovered a natural chemistry between Moreau’s radical take on French chanson and Ponomarev’s innovative reinvention of Gypsy melodies. The result was a passionate, playful and often mesmerising double act which has wowed audiences throughout Ireland and Britain.
“I am always dying to find great musicians,” Moreau says, “and when I heard Oleg for the first time in Vicar Street I knew he had that passion that I admire. When we started playing together I knew right away that there was something wild in Oleg and me that goes together.
“When I am singing sometimes it’s like I go into a trance and the wildness and freedom of Oleg’s playing is like being brought away on a magical flying carpet!”
Les chansons
While most of the songs in the show are sung in French, one exception is Leonard Cohen’s ‘The Partisan’, a song Moreau was drawn to as it reminded her of stories her own grandmother told of the Occupation of France by the Germans in World War II.
“We have a versatile selection of songs in the show,” she notes. “There are songs by the likes of Brel, Piaf, and Gainsbourg and also some songs from the medieval era. Most of them talk about love and are like these little stories. There are some songs from Brittany also; I have spent a lot of time there and I feel there is a relationship between Irish and Breton music.”
Moreau has proved herself to be a dynamic, electrifying performer and Galway audiences are in for a real treat when she hits the Town Hall stage.
To quote from an Irish Independent review of one of her gigs; “What Caroline Moreau does is simultaneously meet our expectations and blow them to smithereens…with a vibrancy that is thrilling…Moreau embodies the voice of each song, not only with her own very sturdy pipes, but also with her body and soul: she becomes the entire world of the song, and proves herself to be a convincing actress in the process.”
Moreau’s Galway concert is being organised by Alliance Française de Galway and support on the evening will be provided by the Breton group Malig’ Laouen. As an added perk, the event will also include a tasting of French wines.
Amours Toujours, etc... will reveal guns concealed under beds, Romeos and Juliets, sailors howling at the moon, and much more besides. Caroline Moreau will break open a treasure chest of musical tradition and invites her audience to share in the plunder. Join her in a raucous carnival which celebrates the wilder side of desire, the power of protest and the haunting shadowlands of death.
Caroline Moreau will perform in the Town Hall Theatre on Saturday June 11 at 8pm. Tickets are available from the Town Hall on 091 - 569777 and www.tht.ie
