A pioneer in the intimate style of song, the interpreter of "Seule ce soir"
invented her own style and renewed the French chanson of her time. Born Thérése
Marie Léonie Gendebien in Boulogne-sur-Mer on August 27, 1912, she grew up in
the Rhineland, where her father ran a silk business, and then in Austria. After
her father died when she was six, she took singing lessons and studied piano and
violin at the Vienna Conservatory, before her mother moved to Marseille. Gifted
with a contralto voice, she turned to music-hall and, at the age of fifteen,
made a name for herself at the Art...