French singer and songwriter Georges Moustaki died overnight Wednesday in Nice at the age of 79, his close entourage has announced.
Moustaki wrote some 300 songs throughout his career, notably for French stars Edith Piaf, Serge Reggiani, Yves Montand, Barbara, Juliette Greco and Pia Colomba, and became one the country’s most popular singers of his generation, perhaps best known for his 1969 hit Le Métèque.
His last stage appearance was in Barcelona in January 2009, when he was forced to cut short a concert for health reasons. In an interview with French daily La Croix in 2011, Moustaki announced that he was suffering from an “irreversible” respiratory disease that had left him incapable of any further singing.
Born on May 3rd 1934 to European Jewish parents who settled in Egypt, Moustaki – whose real name was Giuseppe Mustacchi – was raised in the city of Alexandria where he attended a French school.
He moved to Paris in 1951, where he met French singer and songwriter Georges Brassens who introduced him to the Left Bank showbiz and artistic world of the Saint-Germain-des-Prés district. In honour of Brassens, Moustaki changed his first name to ‘Georges’.
He began as a composer, signing some of the biggest French hits of the 1950s and 1960s, including ‘Milord’ for Piaf in 1958, ‘Sarah’, ‘Ma liberté’, ‘Ma solitude’, ‘Votre fille a vingt ans’ for Reggiani in the mid ‘60s and ‘La Dame Brune’ for Barbara in 1968. From the late 1960s he became a singer in his own right.
Moustaki was also a talented painter.
“He was an absolutely exquisite man, very polite, he was a refined man, an elegant man who had an infinite gentleness and also talent,” said French singer and actress Juliette Gréco, 86, speaking on RTL radio on Thursday shortly after the news of Moustaki’s death. “He was like all poets, he was someone who was different. It’s always difference that makes up talent.”
Moustaki, whose home for the past 40 years was on the Ile St. Louis in central Paris, had spent several months in Nice before his death.
(Reporting by Mediapart)