Yvonne George
Encyclopedia
Yvonne de Knops is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....
1930), better known by her stage name Yvonne George, was a Belgian singer and feminist actress.
Biography
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
, where she befriended Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...
, but gravitated especially toward a repertoire of old songs with realist themes.
Paul Franck, director of the Paris Olympia, discovered George in the 1920s in a Brussels cabaret
Cabaret
Cabaret is a form, or place, of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue: a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables watching the performance, as introduced by a master of ceremonies or...
. George debuted at the Olympia in 1922, singer her famous Nous irons à Valparaiso (We will go to Valparaiso) and Good bye Farewell. A certain high-minded section of the public did not appreciate the refrain of this song; George already achieved a polemical success, criticised by this section of the public which would be hostile to her intellectualism and emancipation throughout her career.
Yvonne George moved into a ground-floor apartment in Neuilly
Neuilly
Neuilly is a common place name in France, deriving from the male given name Nobilis or Novellius:...
with desirable decor, where she received many artists and men of letters.
In 1924, well-known in Parisian intellectual circles as a charming singer, George became the subject of a passionate love affair with the French poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
Robert Desnos
Robert Desnos
Robert Desnos , was a French surrealist poet who played a key role in the Surrealist movement of his day.- Biography :...
, who wrote her numerous poems including the famous J'ai tant rêvé de toi (I have dreamed so much about you). Desnos initiated her into taking opium
Opium
Opium is the dried latex obtained from the opium poppy . Opium contains up to 12% morphine, an alkaloid, which is frequently processed chemically to produce heroin for the illegal drug trade. The latex also includes codeine and non-narcotic alkaloids such as papaverine, thebaine and noscapine...
. It was in this period that Desnos also wrote his novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
La Liberté ou l’Amour (Freedom or Love), a work which would be condemned for obscenity
Obscenity
An obscenity is any statement or act which strongly offends the prevalent morality of the time, is a profanity, or is otherwise taboo, indecent, abhorrent, or disgusting, or is especially inauspicious...
by the tribunal de la Seine.
George's performance style is considered as embodying the principles of the French realist song. She left a very small posterity to the public at large. Her musical repertoire contained some 200 songs, but she recorded very few. 21 recordings were made, of which only 16 survive, some of which are repeats of each other. The themes of the songs, however, and her manner of interpretation with a troubled, broken voice, were to influence other singing and speaking performers such as the French singer Barbara
Monique Serf
Monique Andrée Serf , known as Barbara , was a popular French female singer...
. Yvonne George participated in the progress of female emancipation in the inter-war period.
Weakened by her the excesses of her lifestyle, George fell ill with tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
. Following ineffective treatments, she died in a hotel room near the port of Genoa on the 16th of May 1930, aged 33.
Partial discography
- J'ai pas su y faire (Cartoux - Costil - Yvain) - 1925
- C'est pour ça qu'on s'aime (Telly - Borel-Clerc) - 1925
- Le petit bossu (inconnu) - 1925
- Je te veuxJe te veux"Je te veux" is a song composed by Erik Satie to a text by Henry Pacory. A sentimental waltz, it was written for Paulette Darty, whose accompanist Satie had been for a period of time. The text consists of two verses and a repeated chorus.The song was registered with SACEM on 20 November 1902, but...
(Erik SatieErik SatieÉric Alfred Leslie Satie was a French composer and pianist. Satie was a colourful figure in the early 20th century Parisian avant-garde...
) 1925 - J'ai pas su y faire (deuxième version) - 1926
- You Know You Belong to Somebody Else - 1926
- Pars (Lenoir) - 1926
- Chanson de marin (Auric) - 1926
- Toute une histoire (Jeanson) - 1926
- La mort du bossu - 1926
- Adieu chers camarades - 1926
- Ô Marseille (Wiener) - 1927
- Chanson de route (Wiener) - 1927
- C'est pour ça qu'on s'aime (deuxième version) - 1928
- Si je ne t'avais pas connu (Boyer - Boyer - Verdun) - 1928
- J'ai pas su y faire (troisième version) - 1928
- Le bossu (deuxième version) - 1928
- Les cloches de Nantes - 1928
- L'autre (Lenoir) - 1928