«Three small notes of music/ Have folded shop/ In memory»: Cora Vaucaire has left us.
Born in 1918, the singer of the unforgettable jingle of Henri Colpi’s film, Such a long absence, was the heiress of Frehel and songs from barricades, Piaf and street tunes, Barbara’s friend, the last representative of an era of French song that disappears with her.
Marseillaise by birth, became the embodiment of the Parisienne, gouailleuse and elegant, the one also called the Dame blanche de Saint-Germain-des-Prés had sung Léo Ferré, Louis Aragon, Guillaume Apollinaire, the Dead leaves of Jacques Prévert and the Time of the Cherries. Serge Gainsbourg had written for her.
Those who saw him perform on stage at Bouffes du Nord, again in 1999, remember a woman with dazzling poetry who remained intact. His disappearance raises «a cruel curtain of scene/ On thousand and one sorrows/ Who do not want to die.».