Childhood
Born in Paris to a Jewish family, she was ten years old when she had to go into hiding during the German occupation of France in World War II. After the war ended, a neighborhood professor of music heard Monique sing and took an interest in helping her develop her talents. She was given vocal lessons and taught to play the piano and eventually she enrolled at the Ecole Supérieure de Musique. However, money was a problem and she gave up her musical studies to sing at "La Fontaine des Quatre Saisons," a then popular cabaret in Paris.
A sensitive girl, she was deeply scarred by the war and her family's plight. Her inner feelings of emptiness experienced at this stage in her showed in her appearance and in her songs, particularly "Mon Enfance". It is reported by Barbara in her interrupted (assembled from notes found in her house at Precy-sur-Marne) autobiography, "Il était un piano noir", that her father sexually abused her when she was ten. He would later leave the family never to return. Barbara attended his burial in Nantes, which originated one of her most popular songs ("Nantes"), immortalizing that time in her life.
Read more about this topic: Barbara (singer)
Famous quotes containing the word childhood:
“... a country encapsulates our childhood and those lanes, byres, fields, flowers, insects, suns, moons and stars are forever reoccurring.”
—Edna O’Brien (b. c. 1932)
“Oh! mystery of man, from what a depth
Proceed thy honours. I am lost, but see
In simple childhood something of the base
On which thy greatness stands; but this I feel,
That from thyself it comes, that thou must give,
Else never canst receive. The days gone by
Return upon me almost from the dawn
Of life: the hiding-places of man’s power
Open; I would approach them, but they close.”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
“Sensible people get the greater part of their own dying done during their own lifetime. A man at five and thirty should no more regret not having had a happier childhood than he should regret not having been born a prince of the blood.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)