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:
“It is among the ranks of school-age children, those six- to twelve-year-olds who once avidly filled their free moments with childhood play, that the greatest change is evident. In the place of traditional, sometimes ancient childhood games that were still popular a generation ago, in the place of fantasy and make- believe play . . . today’s children have substituted television viewing and, most recently, video games.”
—Marie Winn (20th century)
“Indeed, my mother’s beautiful face still shone with youthfulness that night when she so softly held my hands and sought to stop my tears; but, precisely, it seemed to me that this should not have happened, her anger would have saddened me less than this new sweetness that my childhood had never known; it seemed to me that, with a hidden and impious hand, I had just traced the first wrinkle and made appear the first grey hair in her soul.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“The childhood shows the man,
As morning shows the day.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)