Martinican soprano Christiane Eda-Pierre, the first black French singer to have an international career, died at the age of 88.
She had sung in the greatest opera houses, from Paris to New York, via London or Vienna.
Martinican soprano Christiane Eda-Pierre, a very great French voice and the first black singer from France to make a major international career, has died at the age of 88.
Born March 24, 1932 in Fort-de-France in Martinique, Christiane Eda-Pierre, who was also a great teacher at the Paris Conservatory, died Sunday of natural death in her house in Deux-Sèvres, in the center-west of France, according to his relatives.
"French opera loses an irreplaceable voice and Martinique one of its most talented children," responded the Ministry of Overseas France in a tweet.
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First black French singer to have an international career
The first black French singer to have an international career, she defended the representativeness of black artists in all the arts.
"She said that the more we put them on stage, the more it would normalize," her biographer Catherine Marceline told AFP.
The one who sang in the greatest opera houses, from the Paris Opera to New York, via London or Vienna, had notably triumphed in 1977 in
Offenbach's
Les Contes d'Hoffmann
, directed by Patrice Chereau.
A soprano with an eclectic repertoire, she participated in the creation of
Saint-François d'Assise
by French composer Olivier Messiaen, in the role of the Angel.
In the early 1980s, she even sang "in a concert with Pavarotti in Central Park in front of 300,000 people, at the end of which the American public reserves her an extraordinary ovation", reports her biographer, Catherine Marceline.
"What a voice, what a beautiful person Christiane Eda-Pierre is," said the current Minister of Culture Roselyne Bachelot in 2018 in a column on France Musique.
She described this "French queen of lyrical art" as "Mozartian of incomparable subtlety".
"She knew how to impose her style, her voice, her personality, her laugh. She has never forgotten where she came from, Martinique", reacted Fabrice Di Falco, also Martinican, opera singer and organizer of the competition " Voix des Outre-mer ", on Outre-mer La 1ère.