Jacqueline Waeber - colloquium
- Friday, March 18, 2011
- 107 Old Cabell Hall
- 3:30 p.m.
- Free
One of the most enduring icons of the Parisian Belle Epoque, the French diseuse Yvette Guilbert (1865–1944) had a triumphal career singing the popular repertoire of the café concert in France and abroad. However, in the 190ss, she began a "second" career, entirely dedicated to the revaluation of the patrimony of the "chanson française" with the explicit aim of “elevating” her art. If the myth of the "two careers" was largely built by Guilbert herself, the seeds of such revaluation were already present during her first career.
This talk aims to pinpoint the ideological subtexts that motivated Guilbert to construct a supposedly new repertoire dedicated to the celebration of the chanson ancienne and the chanson populaire. The time period considered here, from 1889 to the eve of World War I, is crucial for understanding how Guilbert defined her conception of the “canon” of the chanson through its process of historicization and its ideological appropriation by the left and the right wings.