Jacques Brel.indd - Stratford Festival

Jacques Brel
Music
Jacques Romain Georges Brel was born in
Brussels, Belgium, on April 8, 1929. After a brief
stint working in his father’s cardboard factory, he
began to pursue a career as a singer-songwriter. In
1950 he married Thérèse Michielsen, with whom he
would have three daughters, but by the 1960s the
couple were living apart.
After making his first two-song recording in 1953,
Brel moved to Paris, where he began performing
his own songs on the cabaret and music-hall circuit.
He recorded his debut album in 1955; his second
album, two years later, contained the hit single
“Quand on a l’amour,” for which he won the Grand
Prix de l’Académie Charles Cros. Over the course of
the next decade, Brel became an international star,
but in 1967 he abandoned his career as a concert
performer in favour of theatre and film.
In 1968 he starred in the French version of Man
of la Mancha, which he himself translated and
directed. His film work included roles in Mon oncle
Benjamin (1969), L’aventure, c’est l’aventure (1972)
and the unsuccessful Le Far-West (1973), which he
also directed.
By 1974, Brel was suffering from advanced lung
cancer. After an operation in Brussels, he decided
to move with his new partner, Madly Bamy, to the
Marquesan island of Hiva Oa, in French Polynesia.
He returned to Paris in 1977 to record his final
album, Les Marquises, and died there on October
9, 1978. He was buried in Atuona, on Hiva Oa, in the
same cemetery as the painter Paul Gauguin.
Eric Blau
Production conception, English lyrics
and additional material
Milton Eric Blau was born in Bridgeport,
Connecticut, on June 1, 1921, the son of Hungarian
immigrants. After leaving the City College of New
York without graduating, he served with the U.S.
Army Signal Corps during the Second World
War. While in Europe, he had some of his poems
published in French.
After the war he founded and edited Masses
and Mainstream, a literary journal dedicated to
Communist principles, and worked as a freelance
writer, ghostwriter and publicist. With cartoonist
Roy Doty he created The Adventures of Danny
Dee, an animated children’s television show that
first aired in 1953.
Blau and his wife, Elly Stone, were introduced to
the music of Jacques Brel by Nat Shapiro, a friend
who worked for a record company; Elly was so
enchanted she asked her husband to translate the
French lyrics into English. Some of those English
versions appeared in the musical revue O, Oysters!,
after which Blau and Mort Shuman set about
translating more songs to create Jacques Brel Is
Alive and Well and Living in Paris. Elly Stone was a
member of the original off-Broadway cast.
Blau subsequently published novels, non-fiction
books and one collection of poetry, and produced
some small off-Broadway musicals, though none
were as successful as Jacques Brel. He died of
pneumonia in New York on February 17, 2009.
Mort Shuman
Production conception, English lyrics
and additional material
Mortimer Shuman was born in Brooklyn on
November 12, 1936, the son of Polish immigrants.
As a teenager, he formed a close friendship with
singer-songwriter Doc Pomus, who became his
mentor and writing partner. Together, Shuman and
Pomus created hit singles for such artists as Elvis
Presley, Ray Charles, Andy Williams and the Drifters,
including “Viva Las Vegas,” “Turn Me Loose,” “Can’t
Get Used to Losing You,” “A Teenager in Love” and
“Save the Last Dance for Me.”
In the mid-1960s Shuman left New York for an
extended period of travel. In Paris he discovered
the music of Jacques Brel; returning to New York,
he teamed up with Eric Blau to create Jacques Brel
Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. Shuman was
also one of the four cast members of the original
off-Broadway production, which opened in 1968.
After Jacques Brel Shuman returned to Paris,
where he spent 15 years writing and recording
songs and composing film scores. He then moved
to London with his wife, Maria-Pia, and their three
daughters, to continue his work in English. He died
in London on November 3, 1991.
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