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All Music Guide:
Serge Reggiani is a French chanson legend who first rose to fame as a singer in the 1960s after already having established himself as an actor in the cinema decades earlier. Born on May 2, 1922, in Reggio Emilia, Italy, he moved to France with his family at age eight. In the 1940s he established himself as an actor in the French cinema, most notably appearing in the Marcel Carné film Les Portes de la Nuit (1946) in addition to many others. He remained active in the cinema from the 1940s until the end of the century, acting in over 80 films total. During the 1960s, while in his forties, Reggiani made a surprising foray into the recording music industry and released his full-length album debut, Serge Reggiani Chante Boris Vian (1964), on the Disques Jacques Canetti label. The album showcased the songwriting of Boris Vian, a prolific Parisian writer whose body of work Reggiani would return to in subsequent years. Serge Reggiani Chante Boris Vian was fairly well received upon its release, and Album No. 2 (1967) followed a few years later on Disques Jacques Canetti. In 1968 Reggiani switched to Polydor and released Et Puis... (1968), the first of over a dozen of his albums on the label issued over the course of the 1960s, '70s, and '80s. He then switched to the Tréma label for a series of latter-day albums during the 1980s and '90s. Reggiani died on July 23, 2004, in Paris. A long line of best-of collections were compiled in the wake of his death, most notably the box set Une Vie de Passi (2005).
Wikipedia:
Serge Reggiani (2 May 1922 – 23 July 2004) was an Italian-born French singer and actor. He was born in Reggio Emilia, Italy and moved to France with his parents at the age of eight. For many years, he struggled with alcoholism, caused in part by the 1980 suicide of his son Stephan.
After acting school (Conservatoire des arts cinématographiques) he was discovered by Jean Cocteau and appeared in a wartime production of Les Parents terribles ("The Terrible Parents"). During World War II, he left Paris to join the French resistance.
His first feature film came in 1946 with his role in Les portes de la nuit ("Gates of the Night"). He later went on to perform in 80 films including Casque d'or, Les Misérables (1958),Tutti a casa, Le Doulos, Il Gattopardo, La terrazza, The Pianist (1998).
In spite of never quite reaching the peak with his acting career, he did triumph in the theatre in 1959 with his performance in Jean-Paul Sartre’s play Les Séquestrés d'Altona. In the meantime, though, in 1965 he began a second career, that of a singer (at the age of 43), with the help of Simone Signoret and her husband Yves Montand and later with great assistance of the French diva Barbara. Reggiani became one of the most acclaimed performers of French "Chanson" ("song") and although he was in his 40s, his bad-boy rugged image made him popular with both young and older listeners.
His best known songs include Les loups sont entrés dans Paris ("The Wolves Have Entered Paris") and Sarah (La femme qui est dans mon lit) ("The Woman Who Is In My Bed"), the latter written by Georges Moustaki. However, one of his regular songwriters throughout his career was Boris Vian (Le Déserteur, Arthur où t'as mis le corps, La Java des bombes atomiques). His new young fans identified with his left-wing ideals and antimilitarism, most notably during the 1968 student revolts in France. With age he became more and more acclaimed as one of the best interpreters of the French chanson also bringing the poetry of Rimbaud, Apollinaire and Prévert closer to his audience. In 1995, he made a comeback to the singing stage, giving a few concerts despite his deteriorated health and personal distress, the last one being held as late as in the year of his death, in spring of 2004.
In later life he became a painter and gave a number of exhibitions of his artwork.
Serge Reggiani died in Paris of a heart attack at the age of 82, one day after the death of another well known French singer Sacha Distel. He is interred in Montparnasse Cemetery.
