Once More, with I'Electricit

By Gerald Clarke

YVES MONTAND

The calendar said September, but the audiences filling Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House obviously did not believe it. When the jaunty man in the black vest and open-necked shirt sauntered out from the wings, it was April in Paris and the giant stage was a boulevard: for the first time in nearly a quarter of a century, Yves Montand is once again on tour in America.

For an hour and a half, through some 30 songs, he does what only he can do. He brings to life the almost forgotten spirit of the Parisian music hall, still vital, vibrant and surging with what he calls l'electricite. Singing all but one of his numbers in French, he ranges from comic routines to nostalgic set pieces, from songs of social protest to romantic ballads as sharp and bittersweet as anisette.

Indeed, Montand, with his sad, weary, Bogart eyes, is best when he sings of love and melancholy, which seem, as he describes them, to be one and the same. Most audiences, moreover, will almost certainly know a bit of his history: his early romance with Edith Piaf, his brief affair with Marilyn Monroe and his long and enduring marriage to Actress Simone Signoret. Montand does not stand alone. He is surrounded by ghosts, memories and the soft, dusky glow of nostalgia.

In a show that runs without intermission, only once is he offstage. And even then his image is on: a giant screen descends, and in a skit written by Simone Signoret, Montand dictates to an unseen and unfeeling telephone operator a telegram of love to his mistress. The dialogue is hilarious, a reminder that Montand, the chanteur extraordinaire, is also a gifted actor and comedian, the star of such films as The Wages of Fear, Z and La Guerre Est Finie.

That acting ability, in fact, is what makes Montand such a magnetic singer. His voice is superb, of course, as mellow and true as a bass viol; at 60, he sounds just as good as he did 20 or 30 years ago. But the soul of a Montand song is not just in his voice, it is in his lithe, dancer's body, his mobile face, and his articulate, talkative hands and fingers. The soul is also in the lyrics themselves, and Montand's elegant and inimitable phrasing. The pity, it must be added, is that so much will be lost on audiences that do not know, and cannot be expected to know, French. The songs, to be sure, are translated in the program, but the lyrics are impossible to follow in a darkened theater.

Another pity, both in New York and the six other American and Canadian cities Montand will visit on his six-week tour, is that he is booked into such huge theaters. The Metropolitan, for example, seats about 4,000; the Olympia in Paris, where Montand is accustomed to playing, holds only 2,100. The Metropolitan Opera House was designed for grand opera, not intimacy and even Montand's considerable charm is not large enough to fill it, or the other vast halls he will be playing.

-- By Gerald Clarke

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.