2023-04-18 02:45:00
The Printemps de Bourges opens on Tuesday with around a hundred concerts this week. The 47th edition of this springboard for young talent looks promising.
By Quentin Marchal for Le Point
© GUILLAUME SOUVANT / AFP
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IIt has built up quite a reputation for becoming a staple of French cultural events. The 47th edition of Printemps de Bourges begins on April 18 with festivities that will last for five days. While its success is characterized in part by its status as a talent scout, with a scouting system set up in the mid-1980s, here are five things to know about the event, which marks the start of the festival season since years.
A program provided in 2023
For five days, from Tuesday April 18 to Saturday April 22, Bourges will become the cultural capital of France with its famous music festival. On the program, 150 artists will perform in 33 shows. Among the headliners, we find in particular M, who performs the opening but also Lomepal, Juliette Armanet, Selah Sue, or even Bob Sinclar, Izïa, Lorenzo and Benjamin Biolay. Ticket prices vary between 8 and 44 euros. The concerts will take place in about fifteen performance halls spread throughout the city, including Le W.
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1977, the birth of Spring
At the end of the 1970s, television and radio sets gave pride of place to musical stars of the moment such as Dalida, Michel Sardou, Claude François and Mireille Mathieu. But leave aside a whole part of the French variety. It is in this idea that the Printemps de Bourges will be born, with its first edition from April 6 to 10, 1977, which aims to bring together “the other song”. Daniel Colling, Alain Meilland and Maurice Frot are its illustrious creators. The form of the festival was original for the time: in five days, around forty artists followed one another during multiple concerts at the Maison de la Culture. Charles Trénet was the headliner of this first edition.
These concerts that made the legend of the Printemps de Bourges
In nearly half a century, the city of Bourges and its festival have seen many artists of international stature. Its historical followers recall several exceptional concerts, particularly in the 1980s with Johnny Hallyday and Eddy Mitchell in 1985, The Cure in 1987 or Johnny Clegg in 1988. Serge Gainsbourg, Charles Aznavour, U2 and Murray Head also left their mark. mark the history of Printemps de Bourges.
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A meeting appreciated by politicians
Several political personalities, and not the least, went to the Printemps de Bourges and did not fail to leave some crisp anecdotes there. In 1982, for the sixth edition, the Minister of Culture Jack Lang will be the first to go there, inviting all of his successors in this ministry to go there thereafter. In 1987, the President of the Republic, François Mitterrand, went there to see his daughter Mazarine, whose existence is still unknown to the French, who was then a festival goer. In 1995, a few months before the presidential election, the candidate Jacques Chirac went to the festival to perform a walkabout but received a shower of apples from disgruntled spectators.
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Artists sometimes angry, sometimes comedians
In an anecdote revealed by a former journalist from the Berry Republican, we learn about the sulphurous temperament of the American singer Nina Simone. During the 1989 edition, the artist asked for a limousine but instead, the festival found him a Renault. Strongly unhappy, she gives her concert as if nothing had happened. But the next day, when the partners of Printemps offer her a gift box, she throws it on the ground, in rage. In 1992, at a press conference, Juliette Gréco and Joey Starr engage in a skirmish in front of journalists. While they do not know each other, the two artists cling to a humorous background. That same evening, on stage, Juliette Gréco felt unwell. She is hospitalized in Bourges and Joey Starr will hasten to visit her the next day.
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