Directed by KIRSTEN GOULD

Jacques Brel is a librettoless miracle of a show! It includes 20-plus songs of the more than 300 that Brel wrote in his lifetime.

Born in Belgium in 1929, Jacques Brel was the son of a cardboard manufacturer and was being groomed to take over the family business. Already interested in music, he spurned the idea of life in the family factory. Performing and writing were his keys to freedom.

In his early twenties, Brel went to France and sang his songs in the taverns, cafes and inns of the villages and towns of the French countryside. Bit by bit he built up a large and most devoted audience, and became the leading "chansonnier" or "troubadour pop" singer and song writer of France. he went on to Paris as a true star and made the city his home.

By 1959 his intriguing poetry and music had been discovered by producer/translator Eric Blau who, with rock composer Mort Shuman, adapted and assembled twenty-four of Brel's songs into a musical production format. Brel gave his approval, and in 1967 the show opened at The Village Gate in New York where it ran for five years.

Because of Brel's strong opposition to American involvement in Vietnam, he refused to attend his show's world premiere. Several years later in 1969 Brel did attend a performance at The Village Gate. He returned again in 1972 when the show played to a packed house at Carnegie Hall in celebration of its fourth anniversary. He was delighted with the show, and took a bow.

Jacques Brel died in 1978, but his music lives on. His songs are bittersweet, of somber subjects ... life hurts, youth dies, understanding heals, love warms. His words portray people who are unwilling, in spite of all they experience, to abandon either the joy of life or the hope that makes life worth living. He speaks to us in the universal language of the heart. This is the soul of Brel, and we are privileged to share it with our audience.

--Kirsten Gould Assembled from Programme, published by The Writer's Bridge in conjunction with Ideas Associates, Boston, MA, 1990; and from The Village Gate Program, Blue Curl Productions, Inc., New York, NY, 1992

 

Musical Numbers

ACT I