Mireille Mathieu

Mireille Mathieu (French pronunciation: [miʁɛj matjø] ; born 22 July 1946) is a French singer. She has recorded over 1,200 songs in eleven languages, with more than 122 million records sold worldwide.

Mireille Mathieu was born on 22 July 1946, in Avignon, France, as the eldest daughter in a family of fourteen children; the youngest brother was born after she moved to Paris. Her father, Roger, and his family were natives of Avignon, while her mother, Marcelle-Sophie (née Poirier), was from Dunkirk. Marcelle arrived in Avignon in 1944 as a refugee from World War II after her grandmother had died and her mother went missing. Roger, along with his father, Arcade, ran the family stonemason shop just outside the main gate of Saint-Véran cemetery. The Mathieu family has been in the stonemasonry business for four generations. The shop, Pompes Funèbres Mathieu-Mardoyan, is now owned and managed by her sister Réjane's family.

The Mathieu family lived in poverty, but their living conditions improved significantly in 1954, when subsidized housing was built in the Malpeigné neighborhood near the cemetery. Then, in 1961, they moved to a larger tenement in the Croix des Oiseaux  neighborhood southeast of the city.

Roger had once dreamed of becoming a singer, but his father, Arcade, disapproved, which inspired him to encourage one of his children to learn to sing with him in church. Mathieu included her father's operatic voice on her 1968 Christmas album, where it was mixed into the Minuit Chrétiens song. Mathieu's first paid performance before an audience, at age four, was rewarded with a lollipop when she sang during Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve 1950. A defining moment for her was seeing Édith Piaf sing on television.

Mathieu performed poorly in elementary school due to dyslexia, requiring an additional year to graduate. She was born left-handed, and her teachers would strike her hand with a ruler each time she was caught writing with it. She eventually became right-handed, although her left hand remains quite animated when she sings. She has an excellent memory and never uses a prompter on stage. Abandoning higher education at age 14 (1961), after moving to Croix des Oiseaux, she began working in a local factory in Montfavet (a suburb southeast of town), contributing to the family income and paying for her singing lessons. Popular at work, she often sang during lunch or while working. Like her parents, she is short in stature, standing at 1.52 m (5 feet) tall. Her sister Monique, born on 8 July 1947, began working at the same factory a few months later. Both sisters received bicycles on credit to commute, resulting in long days and difficult memories of riding against the mistral winds. When the factory closed, Mathieu and her two sisters (Monique and Christiane) became youth counselors at a summer camp before her rise to fame. During that summer, she had her fortune told by Tarot cards by an elderly Gypsy woman, who predicted that she would soon mingle with kings and queens.

Mathieu is Roman Catholic, and her adopted patron saint is Saint Rita, the "Saint for the Impossible". Mathieu's paternal grandmother, Germaine née Charreton, assured her that Saint Rita was the one to intercede with God for hopeless cases. Beyond religion, like many artists she holds superstitions and beliefs about luck. When asked to reveal some of her superstitions, she said: "The most important one is to never mention any of them." She has stage fright and is often seen making the sign of the cross before stepping on stage.

Mathieu began her career by participating in an annual singing contest in Avignon called On Chante dans mon Quartier ("We Sing in My Neighborhood"). Photos depict the event as rather modest, with a simple curtain and one projector light. The stage was only twenty feet square, and the singer had to share it with a large piano and musicians. A large, boisterous, and mostly young audience was very much in evidence. The judges sat at a table in front of and below the elevated stage. Anyone who signed the contract in the weeks leading up to the show was allowed to perform. Talent scouts made this a worthwhile event for singers from hundreds of miles around.

Mathieu received private singing lessons from Madame Laure Collière, who was also a piano teacher in Avignon. Self-described as very stubborn in her autobiography, she wrote about singing love songs that the audience deemed inappropriate for a young girl. As a result, she lost in 1962 when she sang "Les Cloches de Lisbonne" at the first contest, and lost again in 1963 when she sang Édith Piaf's "L'Hymne à l'amour". However, in 1964, she won the event with another Piaf song, "La Vie en rose".

Her victory earned her a free trip to Paris and a pre-audition for the televised talent show Jeu de la Chance ("Game of Luck"), where amateur singers competed for audience and telephone votes. Her participation and train fare were arranged by Raoul Colombe, the deputy mayor of Avignon. Accompanied by a pianist at the studio and dressed in black like Piaf, she sang two Piaf songs for the audition judges but left dispirited: the Parisians at the studio mocked her Provençal accent, and her dyslexia caused her to mix up words. For example, her sister and current manager Monique is called "Matite" because Mathieu could not pronounce "petite" as a child.

During a 1965 summer gala, added to the Enrico Macias concert by Raoul Colombe (her first manager), Mathieu met her future manager, Johnny Stark. Mathieu and her father initially thought Stark was American, based on his name and demeanor, and they nicknamed him l'Américain. Stark had worked with artists such as Yves Montand, and the relationship between him and Mathieu is often likened to that of Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis Presley. Stark is credited with making her a star and the successor to Piaf. By 1968, under his careful management, she had become France's most popular singer.

Mathieu was invited to Paris by impresario Régis Durcourt to sing on the Song Parade television program on 19 November 1965. Johnny Stark had promised to write to her, but after months of waiting, she gave up on him and accepted Durcourt's offer. The exact circumstances remain unknown, but Mathieu was suddenly moved up to compete live on the Sunday, 21 November 1965 episode of Jeu de la Chance, a talent segment of the popular French program Télé-Dimanche. Stark's ex-wife, Nanou Taddéi, who worked at Studio 102, likely recognized Mathieu, as she had participated in her earlier pre-audition. Mathieu explained that Song Parade offered only one opportunity to sing, while Jeu de la Chance offered multiple chances, but only if she won, and she intended to win.

Both the studio audience and telephone voters gave her a slight lead over five-time winner Georgette Lemaire, so the producers called it a tie. Stark officially became her manager that night, and with the help of his longtime assistant Nadine Joubert, prepared Mathieu to win the contest the following week and defeat Lemaire. Stark and Lemaire had a mutual dislike.

In a short film called La guerre des Piaf (War of the Sparrows), Mathieu and Lemaire were interviewed separately, both being of the same diminutive height. Mathieu was surrounded by her sisters Monique and Christiane, with Stark hovering in the background as she faced her first on-camera interview. She appeared uncomfortable, staring at the floor during many of the questions and even looking dumbfounded at one point, until Stark finally came to her rescue. In a later interview, she emphasized the significance of the event, stating: "For me, Paris was the end of the world. I had never taken a train or seen a camera before. I did not know what the outcome of the adventure would be."

In the middle of her seven consecutive performances on Télé-Dimanche, she performed a concert at the Paris Olympia, which propelled her to stardom. She signed with Bruno Coquatrix, the owner of the Olympia, on 20 December, and performed the only three Piaf songs she had memorized two days later. She was hailed in the press, in France and abroad, as the Piaf d'Avignon (Sparrow of Avignon), in reference to Piaf's nickname "Sparrow of the Streets".

All was not going well at this point. Mathieu said: "I was managed to such mimicry of my idol that I thought I was not able to do anything else. It was instantly one of the biggest disappointments of my life." Stark then abandoned the Piaf direction he was taking her in. The Olympia performance convinced a skeptical Paul Mauriat to work with Mireille, and songwriter André Pascal joined forces to develop her into a successful act. Together they wrote new modern material for her: Mon crédo, Viens dans ma rue, La première étoile, and many other hit songs. Her first album, En Direct de L'Olympia, on the Barclay label, was released in 1966. Highly acclaimed, along with the singles and EPs from it, the album made her a star outside France.

While on tour in February 1968, Mathieu was involved in a car accident in which she fractured one of her vertebrae; the injury incapacitated her for three months. She writes in her book that they received a note which said "we will get you next time", but it was not proven to be anything other than an accident.

In 1971, Barclay was unable to meet the demand for records. Stark then made a contract with Philips Records to issue all the singles and EPs, resulting in a million-dollar lawsuit from Barclay for breach of contract. Barclay's contract was scheduled to run until 1972.

In 1972, Mathieu toured Canada and produced a live album. Stark had his first heart attack while making arrangements for this concert.

In 1974, Mathieu formed her own publishing company, Abilene Music. Today, this company is involved in the publishing and printing of music material.

In 1983, Mathieu established another publishing company, Abilene Disc. This company is used to publish her recordings and is managed by her sisters Monique and Christiane.

In 2002, Mathieu released her thirty-seventh French album, De tes mains (EMI), followed by a series of concerts at the Paris Olympia in November and a tour in France, Belgium, and Switzerland. Reviews in the French press were quite positive, and the public gave Mathieu standing ovations every evening.

Mathieu celebrated the fortieth anniversary of her career at the Paris Olympia on 24 November 2005, releasing her thirty-eighth French album, Mireille Mathieu, produced by Patrick Hampartzoumian, who wrote the main title, "Une place dans mon cœur". The performance, along with an interview, was recorded and released in wide-screen DVD format in 2006; however, the DVD was available only in European video format.

On 1 November 2008, she was a guest of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in Moscow and performed a concert in his honor. The two visited the tent of visiting Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

In November 2010, she was awarded the Russian Medal of Friendship by President Dmitry Medvedev at a state dinner. She was in Russia and the Baltic States throughout November, returning to Paris after a concert in Warsaw, Poland, on 28 November. In January 2011, Mireille was promoted from Chevalier (9 December 1999) to Officier of the Légion d'honneur.

In November 2011, Mathieu canceled her concert in Israel for the second time that year due to the promoter's failure to meet the required ticket sales.

Mathieu is a devout Catholic and attends Catholic Mass with her family.