Counter Culture

Edith Piaf (1915-63) and Jacques Brel (1929-78), were nearly fifteen years apart in age. Their classbackgrounds were very different. Piaf born in poverty and brought up in a brothel. Brel the son of a bourgeois owner of a cardboard box factory. Both escaped into music in different ways. Brel from a job in his fathers factory and Piaf from the grind of poverty. They never met but here Melanie Gall brings there songs together.

And what songs they are! In just an hour Melanie Gall gives us a potted history of their lives and renditions of some of their best known songs like Piaf’s “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien” and “La Vie en Rose” and Brels “Amsterdam” and “La Chanson des Vieux Amants”.

For me the highlight of the show was the performance of two great love songs about loss: Brel’s “Ne me Quitte Pas” (If You Go Away) and Piaf’s “Hymne à L’amour”. Piaf did sing Brel’s moving song seeking to win back his mistress so there was a connection and recognition there.

You can see a clip from the show here