« Din my living room…” The singing tour started by Agnès Jaoui at the Théâtre de l’Atelier*, from October 3, is aptly named. “The idea for this series of festive concerts across France was indeed born at home, with friends. It stems from a simple desire: that of giving people to hear the tunes we love in a setting that is as warm as possible. I often find encounters around classical music too stuffy. I imagine that this deters a lot of people from coming to the concert, ”explains the actress and director.
The evening when she received us at her home, two weeks before the premiere, she confided that she was delighted that “the spectators [puissent] drink in the room. Her friends, singers and musicians, who joined her for a rehearsal in her Parisian apartment laugh. “We too will have the right to raise a glass on stage? asks tenor Loik Le Guillou. “We risk being thirsty if we see them booze”, outbids his baritone friend, Roméo Fidanza; while the other tenor, Nicolas Marie, approves. The exchange summarizes well the state of mind of this group of artists… resolutely relaxed. Like this cat who takes his ease in the middle of them at each session, jumping from the piano to the sofa, before sneaking between the glasses.
Lyrical vocation
Singing has always occupied an important place in the life of Agnès Jaoui. She says she was born into a “music-loving” family. She pauses and resumes. “We listened to a lot of different music at home. But we didn’t hesitate to sing too. I come from a singing family”, she reformulates, evoking tables and car trips, where “everyone hummed: classical, pop, opera and rock. The music and the song were simply part of the “decor” and “too bad if it wasn’t always very right”, she smiles.
His father, a consultant, obviously knew that he sometimes sang a little out of tune. This did not prevent him from pushing the serenade, alternating covers of Brassens, Mouloudji and Brel, but also classics from the Arab-Andalusian repertoire which had rocked his youth in his native Tunisia. His wife, a shrink, told her daughter that she had a pretty voice. It was enough for Agnès Jaoui to dream of being a singer.
READ ALSOBjörk: “Hope is a muscle”
With her baccalaureate in hand, she studied lyrical art very seriously at the conservatory of 7e arrondissement then to that of Enghien. “At the age of 20, my path forked when the chances of life led me to the Amandiers theater school. At the time, I didn’t feel like saying no to Patrice Chéreau. And, in fact, I don’t regret for a moment the years I spent on the boards and then in the cinema, ”she says. The taste for music will never leave her. It also shines through in several screenplays that she co-wrote with Jean-Pierre Bacri: starting with the unforgettable We know the songdirected by Alain Resnais in 1997.
secret passion
However, music remains for a long time, for her, “a private matter”. Even if the soundtracks of her films betray her passion, Agnès Jaoui has long preferred to keep her singing practice secret. It was even clandestine at first. At 22, on the sidelines of her acting career, she continues to take opera lessons with Bernadette Val but does not say a word to anyone. ” This teacher helped me to put my voice. She marked my life by teaching me a certain approach to music with great demands,” says Agnès Jaoui.
READ ALSOClassical music: when advertising pushes the cork a little too far
It was Bernadette Val who offers one day to participate in a summer course in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, with some of his students from the conservatory of 5e district of Paris. Once the internship is over, the actress keeps in touch with her classmates. She will found with them the Canto Allegre ensemble in 2002. Some of its members play their own role in the film as a picture in 2004. A feature film that tells the birth of a singing vocation in a young girl who does not dare to assume it!Hiding behind a nickname
From the end of the 1990s to the beginning of the 2000s, Agnès Jaoui performed on stage anonymously. On the programs, she appears under the false name of Agnès Segna. “No one had realized that the surname I had invented was my first name backwards. One day, coming out of a concert in a church, a listener came to see me, blandly saying, “You’re not going to be happy, but I think you look a lot like Agnès Jaoui”, laughs she.
The actress will hesitate a long time to make this passion public. “I sang in bars with my friends, but it was above all for my pleasure. I couldn’t see myself taking the leap and doing something professional with it. Until the day when producer Olivier Gluzman launched the idea of a tour and a record. Agnès Jaoui then took up the challenge. With the release of his first album in 2006 (sings on the label Tôt ou tard), the actress and director now gives concerts under her real name. “But without fuss”, she nuances. “As long as she was not sure of her vocal qualities, Agnès preferred to play it modest”, believes a friend.
An eclectic repertoire
The meeting with the guitarist and composer of Argentine origin Fernando Fiszbein, founder of the Carabanchel orchestra, pushes her to explore the South American register. Agnès and Fernando first work together on the soundtracks of his films. Their first disc will be born from their complicity, mixing Latin sounds, therefore, but also songs in Hebrew, Spanish and Arabic. This album will be a revelation for Agnès Jaoui. She won’t stop writing songs.
“Initially, she received the Canto Allegre group one day and the Carabanchel ensemble another day. With some, she sang classical, with others rather bossa nova, zamba or danced tango. And then, one day, she got tangled up in her diary and we all showed up at her place the same evening. That’s how we started to play together, ”recalls Nicolas Marie, also a tenor at the Paris Opera. The union of these two formations explains the eclecticism of the program proposed for this tour.
READ ALSOThe fairy tale of pianist Jodyline Gallavardin
The rehearsals that take place in his living room, in mid-September, give an overview. It all begins with a moving cantata by Bach: the “Actus tragicus”, which hauntingly evokes the death theme. “Man must die, at the time chosen by God, and prepare for it by practicing order and wisdom”, sings Agnès Jaoui in German. This is followed by a happier air by the British Henry Purcell, where, impulsively, the actress invites her musician friends to “sound the trumpet”. Fernando Fiszbein points out that Purcell appears in several soundtracks of his feature films. “It is on this music that the characters of the Taste of others meet, right? he emits. Agnes Jaoui nods. “The program may seem to go in many directions but, in reality, it follows a real narrative,” she slipped later.
A classical and pop alternating program
Listeners will make their own film by listening to Handel’s oratorio, where Agnès Jaoui takes on the role of Queen Esther, then hearing her sing the “Agnus Dei” from The Little Mass by Rossini. Supported by mezzo-sopranos Alice Fagard and Julia Selge, the former sometimes playing the flute, the group of singers will also sing Gabriel Fauré’s “Au bord de l’eau” and end with a completely revisited version of Claude François’ hit: ” Come to the house “. A song that also appears in the soundtrack of his latest film (Public place2018).
Some will find it surprising that Latin American ballads are sometimes interspersed: the haunting melody of “Memoria Colectiva” by Lalo Zanelli, the famous bolero by Carlos Eleta Almaran (“Historia de un amor”) and several compositions by Fernando Fiszbein himself , like “Open Baires”, in the form of a poem sung halfway between rap and slam. But for those who understand Spanish, the choice of these songs will appear obvious.
“The program also includes a very personal mambo, as well as a farandole and a ballad composed with Agnès whose name is ‘In my country'”, says the forty-year-old. From “El Diablo Suelto” by the Venezuelan Heraclio Fernandez (1850-1886) to “San Antonio Bebe” by the Brazilian Hermeto Pascoal, these catchy melodies trace a path. As Agnès Jaoui summed up pensively, cooking for her friends, after the rehearsal: “We start by talking about death. But we end with a little joie de vivre. »
* In my living roomseries of concerts by Agnès Jaoui, Alice Fagard, Julia Selge, Nicolas Marie, Loik Le Guillou, Roméo Fidanza (Canto Allegre ensemble) and, alternately, Fernando Fiszbein, Émilie Aridon and Alphonse Cemin, Apolline Kirklar and Anne Le Pape, Clotilde Lacroix and Myrtille Hetzel, Jean-Brice Godet, Claire Luquiens, Simon Drappier and Santiago Quagliariello as well as Javier Estrella (Carabanchel orchestra). At the Atelier theater, 1 place Charles-Dullin, Paris 18eOctober 3, 9, 16 and 17 at 7:30 p.m. Then on tour, from November 2022 to May 2023.